The urban design of the communal apartment blocks was based on Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse of 1935, and the superblocks on the North American Radburn layout from 1929. Visually, the blocks were intended to appear absorbed by the landscape because they were isolated by a belt of tall trees and lower vegetation. Costa attempted to introduce a Brazil that was more equitable, he also designed housing for the working classes that was separated from the upper- and middle-class housing and was visually different, with the intention of avoiding slums (''favelas'') in the urban periphery. The  has been accused of being a space where individuals are oppressed and alienated to a form of spatial segregation.