Populated in the coast and empty in the inside: that is how Brazil is depicted in the Population Density Map 2010: a detailed portrait of the spatial distribution of the Brazilian population over the national territory, based on the results of the Population Census 2010. The publication reveals the differences found in the country's settlement pattern; moreover, it consists of an important document and reference source to foster the discussion about the actual geography of the country and about future strategies of appropriation and use of the Brazilian territory. Ten classes of population density were categorized in order to elaborate the study. Those classes allowed the identification of extremely low (< or = 1 inhabitant/km²) and high (= or > 100 inhab/km²) density sectors. The map scale was 1:5,000,000 (1 cm = 50 km), which is the scale used for wall maps.

The Population Density Map 2010 is available in PDF format on ftp://geoftp.ibge.gov.br/cartas_e_mapas/mapas_do_brasil/sociedade_e_economia/mapas_murais/densidade_populacional_2010.pdf.

Brazilian population is concentrated in coastal zones

The map shows that the highest population densities - above 100 inhab/km² - are located around São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and highly urbanized spaces, such as the area in Vale do Paraíba and the coastal zones or areas close to the vast Brazilian coast. This happens as a consequence of the the settlement process, which had the first and more stable points of settlement near the coast.

The moving of the Federal Capital to the interior of the country was, at a great extent, responsible for the other spots of high density in the areas away from the coast, located in the area between the Brasília and Goiana – and which is nowadays expanding over Cuiabá. The planned capitals Belo Horizonte and Teresina also interiorized great urban flows in the Northeast and Southeast, whereas Manaus appears as a large urban spot centralized in the North Region and in the South-American Amazon.

Natural conditions and production of  agricultural commodities are responsible for low population densities in the North and Central-West Regions

Territorial extensions of the lowest population densities (up to 1 inhab/km²) cover the states in the North and Central-West Regions, beside the countryside areas of the Northeast, as well as the west of Bahia and south of Maranhão and Piauí. Areas adjacent to the Northeastern spot, located in the northwest of Minas Gerais, as well as non-contiguous spots in the Southwest of Minas and in the Pampas from Rio Grande do Sul, of a pastoral tradition, are also among the less populated areas.

This large part of the Brazilian territory of very low population densities covers a wide geographic diversity, either directly associated to natural conditions or to the dynamics of the history itself which changed traditional social functions and usages of less dense spaces.   An example of that phenomena are the lowest population density classes in the huge extension of forest in the Amazon, still very little modified by human interference and very often separated as Indian Lands and Conservation Units. Another example is the intensely occupied surfaces which are destined to the production of agricultural commodities in the cerrado of the Central Plateau, encompassing areas in the Central-West and in the oriental part of the Northeast. 

Those immense extensions of the country came, mostly, from the pastoral/mining past of low indexes of settlement evolving into a present where the modernity of the productive process generates an empty landscape, overtaken by dispersed urbanization and/or cities which are lined up along river courses (as in the case of the occidental part of the North Region) or along highways (as in the Central-West and in the oriental part of the North Region).

Intermediate zones of occupation cover small rural properties and planned settlement areas in the South and Northeast

Between the two extremes, in the intermediate density classes (15 to 100 inhab/km), there is a kind of settlement related to areas of more intense agricultural occupation (in the humid areas of the Northeast Region), and to the areas whose livestock occupation had been related to a property boundary of small rural establishments (as in the Northwest of Rio Grande do Sul and west of Santa Catarina and Paraná).

The most fragmented property boundary is responsible for the slightly higher densities of the agreste in the Northeast and of spots of small establishments associated to public and private settlement projects distributed along the south of Mato Grosso do Sul and east of Pará.