ABSTRACT

The combined processes of industrialization and urbanization in Brazil began in the 1930s, when less than 30 per cent of the population lived in cities, and over the years it has provoked dramatic changes in Brazil’s socio-economic and territorial order, as well as having a serious impact on the environment. Today, after seven decades of intensive urbanization, about 80 per cent of the total population (estimated at 165 million people) live in cities, with over 40 per cent of the urban population living in metropolitan areas. Since the mid-1950s, most Brazilian wealth has been generated in cities. Even though there has been a significant decrease in both migration and urbanization rates over the past decade, the urban, and especially the metropolitan, population is still rapidly growing.