The Curious Case of Downtown Londrina
Wilson Vieira
That’s a thread that probably won’t get any attention in SSP, but I decided to post it anyway, maybe as a diary, a personal archive.
I’ve lived in Londrina before comes to São Paulo ten years ago, in Downtown Londrina, more specifically and I always knew it was dense, denser than other cities of the same size but I never gave much a thought.
Anyway, as I organizing my tables waiting for the 2022 Census, going way down to neighbourhood level, I realized how an oddity Downtown Londrina is, as it has the same size of big dense cities, cities up to 7 times larger than Londrina itself, like Belo Horizonte, Curitiba or Porto Alegre.
For context, here a list with Brazilian largest urban areas (2010 Census). Londrina ranks 27th only:
----------------------------- 2010 -------- 2000
Code:
São Paulo -------------- 19.520.758 --- 17.735.391 --- 10,07%
Rio de Janeiro --------- 11.769.605 --- 10.802.930 ---- 8,95%
Belo Horizonte ---------- 4.563.078 ---- 4.086.680 --- 11,66%
Recife ------------------ 3.513.174 ---- 3.198.113 ---- 9,85%
Porto Alegre ------------ 3.492.743 ---- 3.301.944 ---- 5,78%
Fortaleza --------------- 3.291.204 ---- 2.803.413 --- 17,40%
Salvador ---------------- 3.266.562 ---- 2.857.776 --- 14,30%
Brasília ---------------- 3.187.984 ---- 2.507.587 --- 27,13%
Curitiba ---------------- 2.993.678 ---- 2.608.846 --- 14,75%
Belém ------------------- 2.025.276 ---- 1.784.158 --- 13,51%
Goiânia ----------------- 1.980.649 ---- 1.582.680 --- 25,15%
Campinas ---------------- 1.815.615 ---- 1.537.496 --- 18,09%
Manaus ------------------ 1.802.014 ---- 1.405.835 --- 28,18%
Vitória ----------------- 1.565.393 ---- 1.337.187 --- 17,07%
Santos ------------------ 1.556.718 ---- 1.395.330 --- 11,57%
São Luís ---------------- 1.309.330 ---- 1.070.688 --- 22,29%
Natal ------------------- 1.187.899 ------ 980.897 --- 21,10%
Maceió ------------------ 1.088.456 ------ 931.563 --- 16,84%
João Pessoa ------------- 1.013.215 ------ 853.926 --- 18,65%
Teresina ------------------ 969.690 ------ 845.052 --- 14,75%
São José dos Campos ------- 925.887 ------ 806.734 --- 14,77%
Florianópolis ------------- 851.955 ------ 687.791 --- 23,87%
Cuiabá -------------------- 803.694 ------ 698.644 --- 15,04%
Campo Grande -------------- 786.797 ------ 663.621 --- 18,56%
Aracaju ------------------- 756.952 ------ 611.020 --- 23,88%
Sorocaba ------------------ 739.572 ------ 624.461 --- 18,43%
Londrina ------------------ 651.632 ------ 577.404 --- 12,86%
Ribeirão Preto ------------ 642.343 ------ 535.652 --- 19,92%
Jundiaí ------------------- 633.273 ------ 529.990 --- 19,49%
Uberlândia ---------------- 604.013 ------ 501.214 --- 20,51%
Feira de Santana ---------- 556.642 ------ 480.949 --- 15,74%
Joinville ----------------- 540.098 ------ 453.249 --- 19,16%
Juiz de Fora -------------- 516.247 ------ 456.796 --- 13,01%
São José do Rio Preto ----- 502.494 ------ 439.186 --- 14,41%
Londrina is the 2nd largest urban area in Paraná state with 650,000 inh., way below Curitiba, the capital, with 3 million inh. Londrina is not a touristic city, a tourist resort by the ocean. No, it’s an ordinary mid-size city, surrounded by very productive farmland. It’s not a state capital either, which in Brazil are the largest cities of every single state.
So, let’s get to the numbers. I was greatly helped as those definitions of “Downtown” are pretty much the same size, around
3 km² (or 1.15 sq mi), making comparisons very straightforward. All numbers are from 2010 Census.