Hello! Welcome to IBGE Explains. Today we're going to talk about Population Arrangements!
If you are over 30 or 40, probably you've already said: "In my time. . .
oh, in my time things were not like this. . .
" Well, we may be talking about education of the younger, dressing style, or about a process that constitutes and transforms the spatial organization in our planet. . .
also known as urbanization. Historically speaking, the idea of a city has been attributed to the concentration of people and to the existence of an environment of exchanges, links, material and immaterial transfers; thus, an environment that involves flows, circulation and a number of scales. In the past, urbanization was a phenomenon essentially associated with the increase of population in the cities and explained by the rural exodus.
The fact is that today more than half of the world population lives in urban environments, thus the world is mostly urban. In Brazil this index surpasses 80%! If we think that only 45% of the Brazilians lived in urban areas in 1960, we can get a picture of the different scenarios.
. . As the official agency that produces and analyzes geographic information, the IBGE should necessarily understand this geographic reality in constant transformation.
The term Population Arrangement arises in this context. A population arrangement is a group of two or more municipalities among which there is a strong population integration. There are three criteria to check whether the integration is strong or not.
We will use an example of city A and city B. Basically, a high percentage of the population of A that studies and/or works commutes to work and/or study in B. And vice versa.
After finishing their tasks, those people return to their home towns, in what we call a pendular movement. We call this integration criterion of strong relative intensity. In the case of highly populated cities like Guarulhos and São Paulo, the previous method can take to low indexes.
Just think that 1% of a city of 1,000 inhabitants amounts to 10 persons, but 1% of a city of 1 million amounts to 10,000. That is to say, although the percentage is low, there is a big volume of people commuting. Therefore, a strong integration is established when the total volume of persons commuting to work and/or study between two municipalities is greater than 10,000.
The technical name given is strong absolute intensity. A third criterion of strong integration is the contiguity of the urban spots. When we look at photos like these, aren´t the cities just like spots?
So. When the distance between the borders of the main urban spots of two municipalities is up to 3 km, we have an arrangement. Except for the arrangements created by municipalities that broke apart and created, therefore, two municipalities already integrated, the arrangements arise naturally.
In general, the interactions occur due to unequal provision of housing and work between the towns. This equation brings important factors to be considered, like ease of access, which includes not only proximity, but also the quality of highways, bridges, etc. The concept is simple and becomes easier to understand when we think of a hypothetical situation.
Let´s imagine that city A is a medium city surrounded by smaller cities B, C and D. One day, a number of companies start to be installed in downtown A. The wages are attractive and the demand for workers is big.
The city starts to grow, a number of persons move to city A looking for these jobs, universities arise to meet the technical needs of the companies. A number of restaurants, medical offices and supermarkets open to supply this growing population. The cities B, C and D don´t provide conditions of work and education similar to A.
Thus, several people either move to A or make the pendular movements we talked about before. City A grows so much that its borders meet the borders of B, C and D. The price of real estate in A increases very much and the typical chaos of big cities makes a number of people choose cheaper and quieter alternatives.
People then leave A and start to live in B, C and D, going to A in pendular movements. Bakeries, medical offices, supermarkets and even universities start to arise in B, C and D to meet this new population. .
. You have already gotten the picture, haven´t you? What were 4 separate cities initially and somewhat autonomous, became a population arrangement.
The process is continuous and other municipalities may join these arrangements, as well as other arrangements. It is important to highlight that it is only one of the possible ways to grow. Today, activities other than industrialization, like logistics services, add to increase the number of inhabitants in the cities.
294 population arrangements comprising more than 900 municipalities were detected in 2010, which add up to about 107 million people or nearly 56% of the resident population in Brazil that year. Today, the pace of growth of the largest urban concentrations decreases and the medium-sized towns increase most significantly. Generally speaking, many people are leaving the capitals of the states to live in country towns.
Thus, nearly all the big agglomerations decreased the pace of growth between the 1970s and 2010s. Want to know more about this subject? You can find much more information at the IBGE web portal, including a publication dedicated to this subject.
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