Cidades médias brasileiras: características e dinâmicas urbano-industriais

Abstract

This work aims to build up a typology of the Brazilian medium-sized cities, based on the concepts of urban agglomeration economies and diseconomies. We use principal component analysis in order to capture the urban and industrial characteristics of each medium-sized city and to identify some groups of more homogeneous cities that have similar urban dynamics. The results indicate the existence of some convergence in the urban and industrial characteristics of the medium-sized cities located in the more developed areas of the country, although several features of their differences as specific groups were preserved along the period of analysis. At the same time, urban and industrial divergence is clearly observed between the medium-sized cities of the less developed areas and those of the more developed areas. Thus, the resulting typology indicates some bottlenecks and/or advantages that the medium-sized cities display. This typology of medium-sized cities may facilitate the promotion of public policies better adapted to these cities’ urban and industrial characteristics.