This is a list of the largest cities in Brazil. Brazil has a relatively high reported level of urbanization, with 8 out of 10 Brazilians living in cities (144 million out of 180 million). The criteria used by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) in determining whether households are urban or rural, however, are based on political divisions, not on the built environment. A town is any seat of a district (the lowest political division); a city is the seat of a municipality. By such criteria, Brazil has over 6,000 cities (ten times as many as China) and 12,000 towns. It is estimated that, if more traditional criteria (size of human agglomeration, cultural and economic institutions, regional centrality, paving and street lighting) were used, perhaps 65% of Brazil's population would be urban, rather than 80%.[citation needed]
Cities in Brazil, except for the state of São Paulo, are usually not arranged in a network, but rather on various "export paths" to seaside ports[citation needed]. Some geographers[weasel words] have called this an "archipelago," and most important cities are on the coast or close to it. State capitals are also each the largest city in its state, the exceptions being Palmas, the new capital of the recently created state of Tocantins, and Florianópolis, the capital of Santa Catarina; there are also non-capital metropolitan areas in São Paulo (Campinas, Santos, Paraíba Valley), Minas Gerais (Steel Valley), Rio Grande do Sul (Sinos Valley), and Santa Catarina (Itajaí Valley). Most of the non-capital large cities in Brazil are in the states of São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Paraná.
São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are far larger than any other Brazilian city. São Paulo's area of influence in most economic domains is national (and even international) in scale; other Brazilian metropolises are second tier, even though Rio de Janeiro - thanks in part to its old status as the national capital - is still the seat to various large corporations besides being the nation's cultural center.
Some of the principal Brazilian cities are planned cities; the most famous of these is Brasília, which represents, with Chandigarh in the Punjab, India, the acme of the Modernist school of architecture and urbanism.
Top 100 most populous cities
This list of the 100 most populous cities is based on the population of the município where the city is located, rather than its metropolitan area.
Currently, as of 2004, IBGE officially recognizes 15 major RMs (Região Metropolitana; Metropolitan Region in English), where approximately 32% of the Brazilian population (55 million people out of 180 million) lives. These RMs are responsible for approximately half of the Brazilian GDP and more than 70% of the Brazilian annual industrial production.
1 Data of 2005. 2 Also known as Baixada Santista. 3 Though Vitória is Espírito Santo's capital, the largest city in the state and in this metropolitan region is Vila Velha. 4 Not defined legally.
