Regional cities: international references in Brazilian regional planning in the 1950s and 1960s

A new stage of urban planning emerged in Brazil in the 1950s, with the region as the object of planning. Planners began to recognize the international contribution to the institutionalization of planning and to the development of proposals for Brazilian cities, as well as the connection between planning and urban decentralization ideas. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to delineate the city model that was being proposed within regional scale plans as the result of international urban practices and ideas. Two examples of such plans are presented in this paper: the Regional Plan of Santos (1950) and the Basic Regional Plan for the Coastline of Parana State (1966). As a result of the international references incorporated into these plans, a mixture of urban principles can be identified in these territorial proposals. The regional city model is the predominant principle arising from these plans, derived from the association of two planning scales: urban and regional.