In June, the Federal Government released the publication Urbanized Areas of Brazil 2015, produced by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) using images from the RapidEye satellite captured between 2011 and 2014. The mapping shows that the largest urbanized areas in the country are São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Curitiba, and Goiânia. Together, these five urban agglomerations cover more than 2,500 km².
The images show a country that has been consolidating its urbanization process, dominated by areas characterized by continuous occupation with closely spaced buildings. “An urban concentration can consist of just a single municipality, as is the case of Uberlândia (MG), but it can also be a cluster of municipalities, as is the case of Rio de Janeiro,” explains Maurício Gonçalves e Silva, a geographer at IBGE.
