IBGE report details urban expansion and land use across Brazil

The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) has released the ‘Urbanized Areas of Brazil 2022’ study, utilizing high-resolution satellite imagery to map the country's urban landscape. The research categorizes territory into urbanized areas, empty allotments, other urban equipment, and intra-urban voids.

In the state of Goiás, the total urbanized area reached 2,080.20 km² in 2022, the largest in the Center-West region. Within the state, Anápolis holds the third-largest urbanized area at 101.14 km², following Goiânia and Aparecida de Goiânia. Nationally, Goiânia ranks fifth among Brazilian capitals in urbanized area.

In the municipality of Marília, the urbanized area grew by 3.11% between 2019 and 2022, increasing from 69.09 km² to 71.24 km². A significant trend in Marília was the 115.5% surge in empty allotments, which rose from 1.22 km² to 2.63 km².

Across Brazil, IBGE identified 48.8 thousand km² of urbanized areas in 2022. Dense areas accounted for 70.66% of the total mapped, while low-density areas represented 23.88%, and empty allotments made up 5.46%.