Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística

About the publication - 2005

IBGE makes available for download the product Urbanized Areas of Brazil – 2005. This work results from the mapping (vectorization) of the urbanized areas based on images form the CBERS-2B satellite, on a 1:100,000 scale. The aim is to portray the urbanization stage of the Brazilian territory back in the 2000s. Most of the images that were the basis of the mapping are from the period between 2005 and 2007.

The urbanized spots were classified in three categories: very dense, dense e little dense. The very dense spots usually correspond to central areas of great urban agglomerations, characterized by a sharp density of constructions, with presence of verticalization and almost absence of non-impermeabilized soil. The spots classified as dense, in turn, are defined by a continuous urban occupation, low verticalization, with prevalence of houses, little space among the constructions, but with a greater presence of non-impermeabilized soil. Finally, the spots classified as little dense are characterized by the presence of urban features (streets, blocks, etc.), but scattered occupation. The little dense spots can represent settlements still being occupied or a transition between the urban and rural landscapes, usually located on the edge of the dense spots. There are also cases in which little dense spots are found in small, isolated occupations as, for example, municipal district headquarters.

The product is divided into three sets:

a) Urbanized areas of the great Brazilian urban agglomerations:
Such a set was used as the classical urban unit in the survey Areas of Influence of Cities – REGIC (2007). Those units aggregate all urban agglomerations or isolated municipalities with population above 350 thousand inhabitants in the year 2000 and were determined based on criteria of territorial cohesion, measured through people's commute to work and school (2000 Population Census), and through the conurbation of urbanized areas.

b) Urbanized spots of the Municipalities of the Coastal Zone of Brazil.
In this set are mapped out the urbanized spots of the coastal municipalities as defined by the Appendix A of the National Plan of Coastal Management II (Law 7,661 of 05/16/1988). Those spots were used in maps of the Geographic Atlas of the Coastal and Ocean Zones of Brazil (IBGE, 2011), depicting the urbanization status of the Brazilian coastal zone.

c) Urbanized spots of the municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants.
In this set, urbanized spots of the municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants were vectorized, according to the population estimate carried out by do IBGE for the year 2005.

It is worth mentioning, at last, that the repetition of some polygons occurs whenever a municipality belongs simultaneously to more than one set.