Urban and Regional Report No, 81-12 Public Disclosure Authorized THE SPATIAL STRUCTURE OF THE METROPOLITAN REGIONS OF BRAZIL By Yoon Joo Lee* Public Disclosure Authorized June, 1981 This report was prepared under the auspices of the City Study Research Project (RPO 671-47) as City Study Project Paper No. 19. The views reported here are those of the author, and they should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of the World Bank or its affiliated organizations. This report is being circulated to stimulate discussion and comment. Public Disclosure Authorized Urban and Regional Economics Division Developmei%,t Economics Department Development Policy Staff The World Bank Washington, D.C. 20433 Public Disclosure Authorized TABLE OF CONTENTS Page. Abstract . I. Introduction . II. Trends of Population Growth and Structure in Metropolitan Regions . 3 III. Spatial Deconcentration of Employment and Establishments . 10 IV. Population and Employment Density Functions . 15 V. Conclusions . 26 Footnotes . 27 Annex . 29 References . 31 Support for the work reported in this paper has been provided by the City Study research project (RPO 671-47) funded by the World Bank. The views and conclusions reported here are those of the author and not of the World Bank or its affiliated organizations. The author would like to thank Gregory K. Ingram for research guidance and supervision and Kyu Sik Lee and other members of the City Study research staff at the World Bank and at Corporacion Centro Regional de Poblacion in Bogota for comments on the work presented here, with particular appreciation to Anna Sant' Anna who organized and supervised the collection of the census data. ABSTRACT Using the published census data, this paper describes the spatial structure of the eight metropolitan regions of Brazil during 1940-1980. The analysis shows that the experience of these regions is similar to what has been observed in the developed and some other developing countries. The growth of population and employment in these areas has been rapid but its speed has been associated with the size of the region. Both population and employment in large metropolitan regions have deconcentrated, while they have concentrated in small regions. Employment is spatially more concentrated than is population. Large establishments in manufacturing tend to be located in the rings. The reverse trend is observed in commerce. I. INTRODUCTION It is well known that there is a strong relationship between the world. urbanization and economic development in many countries of services Urbanization increases as the demand shifts to products and income mostly produced in urban areas as the economy gruws and real hand, provides rise. Urbanization in developing countries, on the other resources many benefits to the economy, i.e., efficient allocation of economic and economies of scale which are important components of development. It is also well known that urbanization in developing countries by developed is much faster than what has been experienced historically especially countries (Beier et al, 1976). With rapid growth in population, in urban in developing countries, the proportion of population living structure areas has increased remarkably. With rapid urbanization, the Concen- of the cities of these countries is subject to strong pressures. tration of population places heavy pressures on urban transportation, quality. In water, and sewage systems and deteriorates environmental addition, urban migrants may be poorer, less educated and more greater likely to be unemployed than the general population, placing by the strain on the already overloaded public services provided schools. government such as social welfare, health services and public adequate To minimize pressures on these infrastructure and provide urban public services in a rapidly developing country, decisions on policy should be made in a coordinated way focusing on the socio-economic -2- needs of the urban population. Such an urban policy would establish a clear priority of various projects such as housing, transportation, and water and sewage system, given the overall investment resource constraints. Policy making and long run planning in urban areas require knowledge of the development of the spatial structure over time. This paper investigates the growth and distribution of popula- tion and employment in the eight metropolitan regions of Brazil: Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Recife, Belo Horizonte, Salvador, Fortaleza, and Curitiba. Specifically it attempts to decide whether the growth and distribution of population and employment of these regions exhibit strong regularieties and deconcentration observed in most developed and other developing countries. It is hoped that this study could produce important results for the sound formulation of urban policies. From the viewpoint of urban planning, it is important to try to predict the future movement of total population and employment. We could project this by analyzing previous trends. The main body of this paper is composed of four sections. Section II discusses the growth and distribution of population and compares them among and within the metropolitan regions. Section III examines the deconcentration of employment and establishment in the manufacturing industry and commerce. Section IV presents estimated population and employment density gradients and compares them among the regions and changes in gradients over time. Section V summarizes the findings of this study. -3- II. TRENDS OF POPULATION GROWTH AND STRUCTURES IN METROPOLITAN REGIONS The eight regions being studied in this paper are three metropolitan regions (Fortaleza, Recife, Salvador) located in the north- east which is generally poor and less developed and five metropolitan regions (Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Sao Paulo, Curitiba, Porto Alegre) in the sourtheast where economic growth has been fast. Except for Curitiba, all the regions had a population of more than one million in 1970. These eight regions and Belem were recognized as retropolitan regions in the constitution of Brazil in 1967 and were legalized in 1970. These metropolitan regions were created to centralize planning and public service delivery for large urban areas of the country and to provide a revenue sharing system among the municipalities within these regions. Belem is not studied in this paper due to data problems. To construct a consistent boundary of a metropolitan region over the time period being studied here (1940-1980 census years), census l/ data for municipalities in each region were used and by going back to earlier years it was possible to define roughly the same geographic 2/ regions for the previous years as in 1970 (see Table 1 in Annex). To study the spatial structure of the metropolitan regions, each region is divided into two areas: city and ring. City is here defined as the municipality at the core of the region and the rest of the region is defined as ring. The metropolitan regions are very important in Brazil. The total population of the eight regions in 1970 is more than twenty three million, roughly one fourth of the total population of the country. -4. Also, the growth of population in the eight regions has been faster than the nation as a whole. Table 1 shows that between 1940 and 1980, the total population of the eight regions more than quintipled while the nation's population less than tripled. With this rapid growth, the population share of the eight regions to the nation increased from 15.9 percent to 28.9 percent during the same period. The population growth in the eight regions has been rapid but its magnitude varies among the regions and the time periods observed. For all regions except for Sao Paulo and Curitiba, the growth rate in the fifties was higher than in any other decades. While large regions like Sao Paula and Rio de Janeiro show higher growth rates in the forties than in the sixties or seventies, smaller regions like Fortaleza, Salvador and Curitiba show larger growth rates in the sixties and seven- ties. Regions like Recife and Salvador experienced stable growth of population while Curitiba and Belo Horizonte went through wide variation in their growth rates. Close analysis shows that the growth rate is large when the population of the regions ranges from 4000,000-1,500,000. This growth pattern is consistent with the typical growth pattarn observed in other countries, i.e., average growth rates decline slightly with size. In addition, population growth has not been distributed evenly within the metropolitan regions. The average growth rate in the rings of the eight regions is 4.8 percent, while the rate in the cities is slightly less than 4.0 percent. For the large regions, population in rings has grown faster than that in the cities. For the small regions, the reverse trend is observed. Table 1: POPULATION-AND ITS GROWTH RATES IN THE EIGHT METROPOLITAN 'REGIONS AND BRAZIL (Population in thousands) Population 9 ... 88 .-Estimated Annual'Growth'Rates Metropolitan .'1980_______ual______;rowth-Rates__________ Regions 1940 1950 1960 1970 1940-50 1950-60 1960-70 19/-80 Sao Paulo 1,568 3,181 4,794 7,751 (8,141) 12,582 7.3 4.2 4.9 4.4 Rio de Janeiro 2,364 3,326 5,093 6,910 (7,149) 9,091 3.5 4.4 3.1 2.4 Porto Alegre 673 906 1,444 1,921 (1,980) 2,784 3.0 4.8 2.9 3.5 n Recife 554 819 1,240 1,750 (1,793) 2,346 4.0 4.2 3.5 2.7 Belo Horizonte 346 494 909 1,578 (1,627) 2,563 3.6 6.3 5.7 4.6 Salvador 424 557 824 1,212 (1,262) 1,888 2.8 4.0 3.9 4.1 Fortaleza 289 393 666 1,022 (1,049) 1,592 3.2 5.4 4.4 4.3 Curitiba 325 394 622 884 ( 930) 1,549 1.9 4.7 3.6 5.2 Total: 6,543 10,072 15,591 23,028 (23,931) 34,395 4.4 4.5 4.0 3.7 Brazil 41,236 51,944 70.992 93,139 -119.061 2.3 3.2 2.8 2.5 Source: Census of Demography, Brazil, 1940-1980.