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Almost 1000km from Rio and located in the barren sertao of the Goias highlands - very much in rural, peasant Brazil - Brasilia is the largest and most interesting of the world's "planned cities". Declared the national capital in 1960, the futuristic city is located in a federal zone of its own - Brasilia D.F. (Distrito Federal) - right in the centre of Goias state. But until the city's construction this was one of Brazil's most isolated regions, and the opening up of communications, coupled with a concerted drive to exploit the hinterland, has led to a process of rapid transformation. Much of the finance for Brasilia, and for the Transamazonian road network which has appeared over the last three or four decades, was borrowed by the Brazilian authorities on a more or less conditional basis - the condition being that they agreed to a massive "development" campaign for the region. Funds and tax incentives were made available to persuade some of the largest national and international companies to take part, and by the late 1960s it suddenly became feasible (because of the new roads) and economically viable (because of the favourable bureaucratic assistance from Brasilia) to drop bulldozers by helicopter into the interior. The bulldozers felled trees around the edge of a clearing until the perimeter met the path of another incoming bulldozer. In this way, forest clearance on a gigantic scale led, in a matter of years, to the creation of enormous pasture lands for beef cattle, mostly for the European and American fast-food markets. One of the worst aspects of this kind of development was that - technically - the tax relief was only available to companies which were utilizing at least half of the land they had claimed. Since all that the companies were expected to do was to clear half the land by felling the trees and burning off the stubble, forest involvement for many of the largest companies was little more than a financial game, the cost of which was the extermination of huge tracts of the world's remaining virgin forest. Although cattle ranching is still one of the leading industries in the region, there are signs that this particular type of "development" is slowing down: the tax advantages are now much less, and, on top of that, most of the best and easily accessible land has already been claimed and at least partly cleared. Brasilia's only real attraction - but reason enough to make the effort - is its unique city architecture . The futuristic forms of the National Theatre, cathedral and Congress buildings are a sight you'll never forget: cold, concrete and utterly compelling - though nowadays saplings planted in the last century are beginning to green up the otherwise barren city centre. There are parks and the large man-made Lago Paranoa close to the city and, within day-trip distance, there's the small rural town of Cristalina where crystals and semi-precious stones are more common than bread. The city's also well connected by long, but good-quality, roads to the rest of the country - to the Mato Grosso to the west, to Belem and the Northeast, to Rio, Sao Paulo and the South, and to the even more distant Rondonia and Acre in the western Amazon. At the heart of Brazil the states of Goias and Tocantins give birth to the mighty Araguaia and Tocantins rivers which divide the Amazon basin and much of the Mato Grosso from the more populated areas around Rio, Minas Gerais and the Northeast. It's a huge, wild area, largely off the beaten tourist track. The state of Goias itself remained largely unexplored until this century. Much of the northern half was composed of relatively virgin forest, a haven for previously unknown Indian tribes. Today, long bus rides take you into the scenic Chapada dos Veadeiros national park and, in Tocantins, to the world's largest river island, the Ilha do Bananal . Goias is opening up to ecotourism based around the extensive and distinctive sertao wilderness areas and the historic towns of Pirenopolis and Goias Velho . In the south, the planned city of Goiania is the state capital.
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