Brasilia is a case study in the book Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott. It's a great book that digs into the whole thinking behind such grand plans and why

Brasilia is a case study in the book Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott. It's a great book that digs into the whole thinking behind such grand plans and why they often fall apart. EDIT: The quote at the start of chapter 4 (The High Modernist City) captures the Ideology of these blank-slate planners. > Time is a fatal handicap to the baroque conception of the world: its mechanical order makes no allowances for growth, change, adaptation, and creative renewal. In short, a baroque plan was a block achievement. It must be laid out at a stroke, fixed and frozen forever, as if done overnight by Arabian nights genii. Such a plan demands an architectural despot, working for an absolute ruler, who will live long enough to complete their own conceptions. To alter this type of plan, to introduce fresh elements of another style, is to break its esthetic backbone. — Lewis Mumford, The City in History