10 Most Populous Cities in Brazil

With many Brazilian cities rapidly growing in population and with different growth rates, it can be useful to examine current population trends and compare it with population data from previous years. According to UNdata (a service of the United Nations Statistics Division) from the year 2012, the ten most populous cities all had populations greater than 1 million:

#1) São Paulo: over 11,000,000
#2) Rio de Janeiro: over 6 million
#3) Salvador: over 2.67 million
#4) Brasília: over 2.48 million
#5) Fortaleza: over 2.45 million
#6) Belo Horizonte: over 2.37 million
#7) Manaus: over 1.79 million
#8) Curitiba: over 1.75 million
#9) Recife: over 1.53 million
#10) Porto Alegre: over 1.40 million

Meanwhile, population figures from the Hammond World Atlas* of 2010 showed that the population rankings of Belo Horizonte and Brazil's capital, Brasília, were switched. With the ninth highest population in 2010, Manaus now surpassed the populations of Curitiba and Recife. Comparing these statistics suggest that the populations of Brasília and Manaus grew faster than Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, and Recife. Various social, political, economic, environmental, and cultural factors influence why some cities grow faster than others.

* Hammond World Atlas, Sixth Edition. Hammond World Atlas Corporation, 2010.