I was preparing a talk and wanted to include in it a few images of Brasilia (the new hyper-modern capital of Brazil inaugurated in 1960) that would illustrate Brazil’s drive towards modernization in 1950s and 1960s. I have heard many times that Brasilia was designed to look like an airplane from above, but I have never seen a good map of Brasilia before. As I learned recently, however, Google Maps now offer great coverage of Brazil, so I indeed found a map. Brazilia has grown since and the airplane-shaped downtown may be hard to spot, so I did a bit of gimp work to make it more visible: