Brasília was designed to be a green city. Tree planting was so central to planning for the Brazilian capital that it was described as a park city.
This is evident in the prime central area of Plano Piloto, with its cool, tree-lined avenues, and green parks where the locals enjoy walks.
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This story is part of Dialogue Earth’s work on the Community Adaptations to City Heat (CATCH) project, in partnership with Boston University. The project is funded by Wellcome. All Dialogue Earth content is editorially independent.
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The city was built in just 41 months, replacing the savannah called the Cerrado with a gleaming new capital.
But 30 kilometres away from Plano Piloto, in Sol Nascente, one of the country’s largest favelas (informal settlements) has appeared. Here, concrete rather than greenery has replaced the Cerrado. In Plano Piloto, the amount of green space per inhabitant averages out to 138 m2, according to a University of Brasília (UnB) study of urban green spaces published in 2025. But in some peripheral areas of Brasília including Sol Nascente, that figure is approximately 6 m2 – 23 times less. These outlying areas are characterised by “limited vegetation and greater distances to green spaces”, writes the study’s author.
Sol Nascente consists of mostly tarmac-surfaced streets, with houses crammed on top of one another and narrow pavements that can barely accommodate pedestrians, let alone trees. Heat is a huge problem. “There are times when the whole street is in the sun and the air doesn’t circulate,” says Sol Nascente resident Francisco Silva, talking beside his home.
The health impacts can be severe for residents. “Everything gets very dry, and my nose bleeds,” says the 34-year-old. Silva suffers from rhinitis and bronchitis that disrupt his sleep. “If I close the window, I can’t breathe; if I open it, dry wind and dust come in.”
During the dry season, he washes the yard every day, spreads wet towels around the house and wears a dust mask.
To beat the heat, Silva is renovating. Concrete will make way for grass and saplings. On the pavement in front of his property, he has broken up the concrete and planted the only tree on the street – a solitary ipê, a common species in Latin America.
Dialogue Earth consulted Valdir Steinke, who authored the 2025 public green spaces study and is a landscapes and water management expert at the University of Brasília. He says the Federal District (DF; the region that contains Brasília) reflects a national pattern of “green spaces concentrated in the most affluent areas, whilst the outskirts have almost none”. Indeed, the average per capita household income in Plano Piloto is 12 times higher than in Sol Nascente. “It is a stark and unvarnished portrait of a model of socio-economic segregation in which urban planning in the outskirts ignores nature,” says Steinke.
These problems are being exacerbated as climate change drives up temperatures, increasing mortality and morbidity. In response to such concerns, the government is planning a major programme of tree planting, and residents are turning to guerilla gardening where urban planning is failing. While they try to green Brazil, favelas continue to grow.
Green inequality is a global challenge
Sol Nascente emerged in the 1990s on rural land that had been occupied illegally. Today, more than 70,000 people live there, in 9 km2. This population density is almost 16 times higher than the Federal District average. With its tarmac, sparse vegetation and high concentration of residents, the favela provides ideal conditions for Urban Heat Islands.
“Concrete and tarmac absorb and retain the sun’s heat more efficiently than vegetation, whilst trees provide cooling through shade and humidity,” explains Gregory Wellenius, director of the Center for Climate and Health at Boston University in the US.
The Urban Heat Island effect refers to a phenomenon in which the temperature in urban areas is significantly higher than the surrounding region. Causes include artificial surfaces like concrete and roads absorbing heat; the warmth produced during burning of fuel and other human processes; and an absence of vegetation. The Urban Heat Island effect can exacerbate the severity of heatwaves in urban areas.
Explore more terms like this with Dialogue Earth’s climate change glossary
What has happened in Sol Nascente follows a global pattern. In New York and London, the greatest inequalities in access to green spaces can be found in the outskirts. In the US, 92% of poor neighbourhoods have fewer trees and are hotter than affluent areas, according to another study.
A recent analysis of 199 cities around the world concluded that inequality in access to green spaces is widespread, and the level of disparity in cities in the Global South is twice that of the Global North.
“Extreme heat maps look very similar to maps of low-income neighbourhoods,” Jeremy Hoffman, a researcher at Groundwork USA, a network of American organisations working for climate justice, tells Dialogue Earth.
“Heat hotspots tend to overlap with areas characterised by higher poverty, lower educational attainment, higher rates of chronic disease and less access to green spaces,” he adds.
3-30-300
In 2021, Cecil Konijnendijk, an expert in urban forests and an honorary professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada, proposed the “3-30-300” rule. Its aim is to tackle green inequality in cities. The rule stipulates that every person should be able to see at least three trees from their window, and live in a neighbourhood that has at least 30% tree cover and is no more than 300 metres from a park or green space. These metrics are designed to ensure visual and physical access to nature and its benefits.
The rule has been adopted by urban planners around the world. It is widely used and already guides tree planting policies in Belgium, Sweden, the Netherlands, the US and Canada.
In Brazil, the National Urban Tree Planting Plan, launched at the UN’s COP30 climate conference in 2025, draws inspiration from this rule. It acknowledges that Brazil’s haphazard urbanisation has led to landscape fragmentation, deforestation and concrete-sealed soil which, combined with climate change, all negatively impact urban life.
To reverse this situation, the plan sets targets for 2045. One is to increase the proportion of residents with at least three trees in their immediate surroundings from 45.5% to 65%, which would provide green space access to around 40 million additional people. It is not clear what changes this would bring to Sol Nascente and Plano Piloto.
Some experts question how universally useful the 3-30-300 rule is. Paulina Achurra, from the educational platform Arq.Futuro, warns greening programmes cannot help in communities with “barely even a pavement on which to plant a tree”.
According to Achurra, speaking during an event in São Paulo, “although there is a lack of innovative solutions that incorporate green spaces, they must be feasible to implement in our cities. And these are the challenges facing cities in the Global South.”
Extreme heat brings extreme risk
Dialogue Earth consulted Larissa Brenda Cordeiro, who chairs the Daughters of the Earth Institute (IFT), a socio-environmental justice organisation in Sol Nascente. She says the afternoon heat can make it impossible for the organisation to carry out meetings or work in its office. With her asthma and fibromyalgia, she also feels the physical effects: muscle and joint pain. “I feel really unwell in both the cold and during periods of extreme heat.”
Patricia Fabian, a heat expert at Boston University, says people living in Urban Heat Islands are more exposed to the harmful effects of high temperatures: “The hotter the environment, the greater the risk of health impacts, including cardiovascular disease, cognitive problems, respiratory symptoms and even death.”
Research conducted in the Boston area by Fabian and her colleagues has recorded differences of more than 10F (around 5.5C) between some communities. The hottest areas have scant greenery and an abundance of impervious surfaces.
During the dry season, the temperature in some parts of central Brasília can climb to 37.8C, whilst Ceilândia, which incorporated Sol Nascente until 2019, reaches 46.6C.
Protecting and growing
One of the few green spaces in Sol Nascente is a remnant of Lagoinha Park, which has been gradually deforested for encroaching settlements. The presence of buriti palms indicates an abundance of groundwater. But it is subject to squatting and lacks infrastructure, preventing public recreation. Rubbish accumulates haphazardly, including in the springs that feed the River Melchior and the Descoberto basin – which provide more than 60% of the Federal District’s water supply.
In December 2025, after the government’s national urban tree plan was unveiled, the Federal District approved its own plan to reduce the “green deficit” in its outlying areas. In the case of Sol Nascente, the government has told Dialogue Earth that planting cannot start until problems such as narrow pavements and a lack of stormwater drainage are fixed, because the saplings would not survive. The government did not specify if or when these works would take place.
As a result, activists including Cordeiro are resorting to what she calls “guerrilla planting” in areas like Lagoinha Park. They are ignoring the ban on residents planting saplings, imposed on the grounds that pipes and overhead cables will be affected. “We turn a blind eye and pretend we haven’t heard. If we don’t plant them, who will?” she asks.
Today, the park is a large lawn with few native trees. Cordeiro hopes it can become a wooded area with picnic tables and sports courts: “Our dream is for Lagoinha to become a proper park that the public can enjoy, just like in the Plano Piloto.”
They have a role model for such a project: on the border between Sol Nascente and Ceilândia, a forest dubbed the Floresta da Nasaré grew out of a rubbish tip. In 2009, the housewife Nasaré Francisca da Silva took it upon herself to clear a football pitch-sized plot of public land opposite her home. Next, she planted a seedling. “People used to dump all sorts of things there, from building rubble to dead animals,” she recalls. “I’d look at it from my front door and it made me sad.”
From a seedling grew this agroforest, which is now maintained by neighbours, NGOs and University of Brasília researchers. Da Silva’s care for the land was formalised in 2023 by the Federal District’s government through Adopt a Square. This programme allows residents and businesses to care for public spaces. The Floresta da Nasaré still does not receive public investment but now that it is officially recognised, there is less risk of land seizure or the work being interrupted without warning.
On hot days, it is still cool beneath the tree canopy. Wild animals including marmosets can be seen. “Everyone is welcome to come here and cool off from the heat,” says da Silva.
