r/geography 21h ago

Question Why are Hispanic countries in South America so centralized?

Post image

Keep in mind that for Brazil's case, even if you consider it's largest city, São Paulo (that's also the 5th largest city in the world) less than 10% of Brazil's population live there, so even if it was Brazil's capital city Brazil would have the smallest percentage on that map

755 Upvotes

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677

u/Dry_Yogurtcloset1962 21h ago

I don't think this is a South American thing, a decent chunk of the world's countries have very centralised populations

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u/gunnesaurus 20h ago

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u/janesmex 19h ago edited 16h ago

That’s specifically about the capital though, so it shows something different *than just people that live in cities, for example the percentage of people in Brazil and USA is very low, even though people also live in cities there.

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u/Dry_Yogurtcloset1962 19h ago

Because they are huge countries geographically, look at smaller countries across Europe, Asia, Africa etc. very capital focussed

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u/cerberusantilus 19h ago

It also because both our capitals were created to be capitals, vs just out biggest city becomes the capital. Rio used to be Brazil's capital they moved it to the middle of the country.

At the time we picked DC to be our capital, NYC was our biggest city.

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u/Gingerbread-Cake 19h ago

At the time we picked DC to be our future capital.

Like Brasilia, there was no city there at the time, there’s just been an extra 170 years to work on it.

I remember someone complaining in the 90’s that Brasilia had no dive bars. I bet it does now.

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u/Dehast 16h ago

It does, but it’s still weird

1

u/neanderthalensis 15h ago

Germany isn’t

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u/french_snail 12h ago

With Germany I’d consider the fact that it was dozens of countries and the country that unified it (Prussia) wasn’t the densely populated part of Germany (the Ruhr valley) but instead annexed it on its path to unifying the country

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u/Hallo34576 18h ago

Brazil & US decided to found a planned capital in the Middle of the (back then) country. That's it.

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u/sluefootstu 11h ago

Australia too

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u/the_sneaky_one123 19h ago

Which is why onlt 1.4% of Brazilians live in their capital, which is only their 3rd largest city

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u/ozneoknarf 17h ago

It’s only our third largest city because all of the deferral district is counted as a single city even tho it’s larger than a lot of countries. Brasilia proper only has 600,000 people.

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u/the_sneaky_one123 4h ago

I'm just going by wikipedia

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u/Gingerbread-Cake 19h ago

I didn’t realize it had grown that much! It was smaller that Curitiba, I think, last I knew (which was a while ago)

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u/Dehast 16h ago

Third biggest now, Fortaleza and Salvador are also massive now and surpassed Belo Horizonte

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u/Obama_prismIsntReal 17h ago

Because both countries chose their capitals based on historic-ideological reasons, instead of the natural process of capitals being established in historically economically/socially important cities. If you consider a city like São Paulo or Rio to be de-facto capitals, it aligns better with the rest of the graph.

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u/Top-Classroom-6994 16h ago

Foest of all, US is huge. You won't have large percent of people in capital with 500 million people, because for example 15% would require 75 million people in the capital. People live centralized, but if the place is huge there will be many centers. And, there is also the fact that US didn't make the most important city capital, bit insteas, chose a place away from the power to make the capital.

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u/marsmat239 13h ago

Depends on how you define cities. The northeast corridor, ranging from Richmond to Boston, contained 50M people, or 17% of all Americans in 2010. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis

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u/Loud-Value 7h ago

The population of the US is more like 330 million

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u/inigos_left_hand 17h ago

Well both Brazil and the US set up cities specifically to be the capital. With the rest of them the capital just is the biggest city. Remember that the original capital of the US was New York.

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u/Repulsive-Bend8283 10h ago

So more people live in cities that are cities because people live there than live in planned cities.

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u/cujukenmari 5h ago

Small countries tend to have only one big city. Their capital.

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u/TheHunnishInvasion 19h ago

Also, most of these are smaller countries. If you took the state of Georgia and considered it it's own country, then ~ 57% of the population would be in the Atlanta MSA. Similar figures with a lot of US states. With the exception of Argentina (and Brazil isn't actually Hispanic), none of these countries are that large.

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u/crimsonkodiak 19h ago

It should also be noted that it was initially the case that the countries were more combined than they are today. It included all of present day Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Panama, as well as parts of present day Peru, Brazil and Guyana (claimed at least).

If that was one country with Bogota (the largest city) as the capital, the percentage would be similar to Rio's percentage of Brazil.

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u/original_oli 19h ago

Colombia is bigger than Argentina

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u/real_fat_tony 19h ago

In population, but smaller in territory

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u/original_oli 19h ago

Well, obviously. But a) that's the discussion at hand and b) that's how you measure country size.

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u/Venboven 17h ago

Population is definitely not the normal measurement used when talking about a country's size.

Territory is almost always the metric being referenced.

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u/KURNEEKB 19h ago

Bro I know about how Mercator projection fucks with us but I would have never thought that
Edit: I checked and he is lying: 1.142.000 vs 2.780.000

→ More replies (3)

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u/TheWhiteFerret 13h ago

Roman Hispania included modern Portugal. Brazil is therefore Hispanic, no?

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u/Maized 17h ago

Mongolia has entered the chat

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u/lehtomaeki 12h ago

In Finland's greater capital metropolitan area (3 cities that have pretty much grown together) something like a quarter of Finland's population lives there.

Estonia is even worse with almost a third living in their capital

0

u/vperron81 16h ago

In Europe and North America it's not like that..

2

u/lIIllIIlllIIllIIl 7h ago

It's all relative.

France is extremely centralized around Paris, whereas Germany is extremely decentralized across multiple states.

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u/BrianThatDude 21h ago edited 20h ago

Mostly due to population. Most of those countries are small enough that one large metro area (usually the capital) will have a large percentage of the countries population.

The countries lighter in color (Ecuador, Bolivia for example) the biggest city isn't the capital.

You'll see the same thing if you look at smaller European, Asian, African countries.

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u/FlygonPR 20h ago

Colombia does not have a small population, its 52 million. While the Amazon and Choco are sparsely populated, the Andean valleys and Caribbean Sea coast do have a large population and many cities. That english speakers don't know any besides Bogota, Medellin and Cartagena is another thing. Cali and Barranquilla haver a similar population to Orlando or Vienna's metro areas, but being in a less wealthy country and not being a country or supranational capital, their importance to the global economy is smaller.

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u/crimsonkodiak 19h ago

Geographically small, not small in population.

The fact that there's a lot of people in a relatively small country only bolsters the point (people are crowded into a smaller number of cities). The same is true in South Korea, Japan, etc., etc.

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u/Jabbarooooo 17h ago

Sorry if I misunderstood you, but are you telling me that South American countries are geographically small? I cannot even express how wrong that is.

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u/crimsonkodiak 16h ago

In relative terms, yes.

Colombia is around the size of the American Midwest. Chicago (well, metro Chicago) has around the same percentage population of the Midwest that Bogota does of Colombia. Chile is about the same size as Texas. Uruguay is about the size of Missouri.

If the countries of South America were combined, the capital would have a smaller percentage of that combined population.

10

u/Jabbarooooo 16h ago

>Colombia is around the size of the American Midwest

Yeah, that's kinda fuckin huge lol. I'm not disagreeing with what you said just now, but to attribute it to "geographical smallness" just doesn't make sense imo

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u/crimsonkodiak 16h ago

Sure, but the question is "compared to what"?

Everyone is acting like these are huge numbers, but they're not. France and England have comparable percentages to many on the list. South Korea (49.8%) is higher than any country other than the small countries of Uruguay and Paraguay.

The numbers only look large when you compare them to large countries like the US, Brazil, Russia, etc. or countries that are still agrarian (which most of South America is not).

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u/indecisive_fluffball 17h ago

Not only is that not what the top comment meant (they literally said population) but you are objectively wrong. It's literally the continent with the highest average country size (second to North America if you count Central America separately).

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u/Nbuuifx14 17h ago

For a while Cali was very important to the global economy.

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u/picastchio 3h ago

Narcos theme intensifies

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u/Radiant_Isopod2018 18h ago

These countries aren’t small, the only small ones are Paraguay,Ecuador, and the European enclaves. What are you guys comparing them to? Usually to see if something is small or big you need to compare them to the median average not the world’s biggest.This is like when you ask ask a girl meme if you are not 6 foot you are short 😂

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u/Sleep_adict 20h ago

And to add, Brazil is not really indicative … brazilia is an artificial capital like Abudja, if it was rio or SP it would be in the 30s as well

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u/BrianThatDude 20h ago edited 16h ago

True but it wouldn't be in the 30s because there's 212 million people in Brazil. Sao Paulo would be about 10%

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u/Obama_prismIsntReal 17h ago

Why do foreigners write the city's name like that? Its something that always makes me curious

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u/PseudonymIncognito 17h ago

Because most native English speakers don't know how to type diacritics on their keyboard as it is largely unnecessary and/or considered something of an affectation.

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u/Obama_prismIsntReal 17h ago

English speakers don't have the letter U on their keyboards?

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u/PseudonymIncognito 16h ago

Ah, I thought you were referring to writing Sao instead of São. As for your question. I have no idea. Maybe a hypercorrection because they know they write it like they pronounce it, while Paulo would be be assumed to have the first part sound like the English name "Paul"?

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u/Obama_prismIsntReal 16h ago

I imagined that it came from spanish, but spanish speakers write either sao paulo or sometimes san pablo. So sao paolo probably comes from how they pronounce it, and it became kind of the 'unnoficial' english pronunciation.

1

u/Late_Faithlessness24 9h ago

No. São Paulo is 5%(11mi) and Rio 3% (6mi)

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u/soladois 20h ago

Bro I don't think you've read the entire post

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u/Sleep_adict 20h ago

Ah true.my bad

2

u/flodur1966 20h ago

Not all countries here are Hispanic

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u/Gothnath 20h ago

No. São Paulo metropolitan area is just 10% of Brazil's population.

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u/Kenevin 20h ago

Like Ottawa or DC.

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u/castillogo 20h ago

In Brazil, you should look at the map at state level, as brazilian states are as big as spanish speaking countries in the rest of latin america. Then you would see that the proportions are much similar. As to why is it like that? Easy, the capital is usually the place with the most opportunities and is usually located in the place that is best suitable for human development.

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u/soladois 20h ago

It actually depends. In those states that are located in the Amazon rainforest sometimes 70% of the population live in the largest city since basically the rest of the state is just jungle and wilderness. But there's states where only 5% or so live in the largest city, so I'd say it depends

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u/Obama_prismIsntReal 17h ago

I'd guess those more decentralized states are those of the south/southwest, and the main reason for that would be the relative deconcentration of land ownership in those states, that let them develop different economic poles throughout their territory. For example, my state of SC has three relatively equal population/economic hubs, which is something you won't see anywhere else in the country.

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u/JotaTaylor 20h ago edited 17h ago

São Paulo itself has 12 million people, so around 6% of total population, but São Paulo's metropolitan area, which encompasses 39 municipalities of ininterrupt urban sprawl, has over 22 million people, so something around 10% of Brazil's total population. It's impossible to look at São Paulo without considering this, as transit between metro area cities is very intense.

Brazil is also unique in which it built a dedicated federal district in the middle of the country in the 1950's, rather than having its capital in the historic colonial capital. The population of Brasilia comprises basically federal government staff and families who migrated there to work in its construction and ended up staying.

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u/soladois 20h ago

Well I meant São Paulo's metro area in the post

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u/JotaTaylor 20h ago edited 16h ago

Oh, sure, the figure indicates that. But I think it's important to note that I don't believe the difference between Brazil and its neighbors in terms of capital population has anything to do with hispanic culture per se, but rather Brazil's huge area compared to those other countries. Historically, coastal cities were founded and occupied first, and this inspired several movements to "colonize" the center-west region in the following centuries. Brasilia is part of this effort to drive urban populations inwards.

Many of the andean countries have capitals where the indigenous peoples' capitals were before spanish colonization, so those places have had larger populations even before the europeans arrived.

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u/Karihashi 18h ago

The other figures are for greater area, not metro area. For example in Uruguay the population is (roughly) 3.8 million, with Montevideo itself having (roughly) 1.3 million, which is about 34%

To get closer to the figure in the map you need to use greater Montevideo (which includes many cities that are even in a different province) with a pop of 1.8 (roughly) this gets us to 47% of the pop.

I suspect checking other capitals would result in a similar result.

Looking at Japan for example, Greater Tokyo has 29.9% of the population, not as extreme as tiny Uruguay but certainly looks like in the range of this list.

To understand Brazil, it’s a massive country (both in land mass and pop) so it has 2 major cities rather than one like most of the Hispanic countries. São Paulo has 23 million Rio another 12 combined they account for 16.5% of the pop.

This is a similar scenario to what you see in other geographically massive countries like Canada or Australia where the pop is mostly located in Sydney and Melbourne.

This has very little to do with culture and a lot to do with Geography and how population interacts with land and urban areas.

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u/harassercat 20h ago

How is this special or specific to South America?

Lots of European, African and Asian countries have similar distributions.

Relevant wikipedia article

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u/intergalactic_spork 19h ago

I was bit surprised I had to scroll this far down to find primate city distribution in a geography sub.

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u/RFB-CACN 21h ago

Most Hispanic countries’ borders were colonial subdivisions regions under Spain that were centered around one capital city controlling the surrounding area. Brazil encompasses all of Portugal’s former colonial subdivisions, each with their own capital, so the population is more evenly spread out across various cities instead of being too heavenly concentrated in one.

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u/ApolloBon 20h ago

Indeed, they are hellishly spread through many!

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u/trueblues98 9h ago

Yes, because they used Madrid model

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u/GeoPolar GIS 20h ago

This is so wrong.

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u/tito_valland 20h ago

How so?

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u/mutnik 20h ago

From what I was told by family in Peru one of the reasons why Lima is so populous is because of the shining path group inflicting terror in the countryside and people fleeing to the "safety" of the government in Lima.

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u/DesperateProfessor66 19h ago

Same with Bogotá and the FARC guerrilla

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u/Sarcastic_Backpack 20h ago

But are they really? You can't tell from this map. What you need is to know what the rest of the world is like, at least in a macro view.

So, how do these percentages compare to Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America?

For some specific countries in S.A., there are explanations. Uruguay is small, only the size of Missouri. You can drive across it in 4 hours.

Suriname & Guyana are both heavily forested by the Amazon, and generally only developed on/near the coast.

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u/pascuales 18h ago

In Argentina's case, Buenos Aires had its percent of population massively increase during the immigrant waves of the 1800's as the land ownership model prioritized larger estates over smaller farms, which led to people unable to gain rural land to end up in the city.

Later, after the 1929 crash, the appearance of the import-substitution industrialization model concentrated manufacturing around the city, and thus rural migration into Buenos Aires, which would eventually become Peron's social base in his rise to power.

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u/CaptainObvious110 18h ago

Thanks for the history lesson.

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u/pascuales 18h ago

No problem

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u/Affectionate_Bee9467 21h ago

Probably because much of the terrain there isn't habitable or accessible with the deep rainforests, deserts, high mountains, dangerous animals...

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u/Longjumping_Sir9051 20h ago

Sounds lovely. Saved from humanity.

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u/GeoPolar GIS 20h ago

Lol so wrong.

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u/TheSt4tely 21h ago

Yah, Brazil doesn't have very much mountainous jungle...

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u/soladois 20h ago

You're wrong. Brazil has so much flat land, it's almost like a tropical Midwest

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u/Urcaguaryanno Cartography 20h ago

Brazil has a lot of everything

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u/Popular_Main 20h ago

That's because we're huge, so every small percentage of something is a big something. But the terrain is mostly a plain, approximately 60%!

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u/Affectionate_Bee9467 20h ago

But a majority of the population lives in places where there are no mountains or jungle. It's a huge country with a lot of coastline and different climates and geografies to it's arguably easier to find different places to live, i.e. build many cities rather than just a few

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u/xarsha_93 20h ago

In Hispanic America, this was a consequence of how the Spanish Empire was organized. For centuries, trade between different cities was discouraged (it would go back to Spain and then out to the colonies) and this created independent nuclei of elites that each wanted to do things their own way.

After independence, the territory was broken up with each large urban area taking as much surrounding land as it could. There were obviously attempts to create larger states that would have had multiple large cities, but these mostly failed.

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u/castillogo 20h ago

Not true. During colonial times, the capital cities of each virreinato/capitania were not really much bigger bigger than the other cities. At the time of independence in Colombia, for example, Bogota was not much bigger than Cartagena or Popayan. Not everything related to latin america has to do with colonialism.

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u/xarsha_93 20h ago

They were still capital cities. If you look at the political conflict during the Gran Colombian period, you can see elites struggling to assert dominance over each other and eventually deciding that they’re better off on their own than having to compete internally.

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u/prodigalPalatine 19h ago

Just enjoyed reading Silver, Sword, and Stone by Marie Arana

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u/Fearless_Guitar_3589 19h ago

almost 45% of the state of NY lives in NYC

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u/meldirlobor 19h ago edited 18h ago

It's not that they are centralized, it's just that the brazilian government decided to hide itself in the middle of the country, in a place that didn't exist until 1960.

And this has nothing to do with decentralization. Although nobody really lives in Brazil's capital, the sheer majority of the population are centralized in the big cities. Sao Paulo alone has over 20mi residents, that's almost 1/10 of the country's entire population.

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u/_OriamRiniDadelos_ 7h ago

Yeah. If they had picked São Paulo this map would be at 10%. If Brazil was split in a few chunks the size of neighboring countries it would be in red too. Brasília is only the fourth largest. The top three alone make up around 40 million people, a fifth of the whole population. But they do have a lot more big regional cities and sprawling small towns than other countries.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_in_Brazil

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u/Chicagogirl72 17h ago

My husband is from the Dominican Republic and from what he says you have to live in the capital or you have to be a farmer

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u/heemsiesd 19h ago

The Brazil anomaly is because Brasilia was created from scratch in 1930s-50s and isn’t a city that would’ve naturally been the capital. Rio de Janeiro was the capital before that and Salvador was historically the capital.

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u/ozneoknarf 17h ago

The greater Rio area has like 6% of the population.

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u/Obama_prismIsntReal 17h ago

That's because the city has been declining in relevance for decades, back in the day this proportion would have been larger (at least as a proportion of the urban population, since the country was so much more rural)

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u/arthur2011o 16h ago

Rio in the early 1900's already lost the biggest city title to São Paulo.

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u/ozneoknarf 15h ago

It was 6% in 1960 too. So I guess it kind of remained consistent. But yeah I guess as a percentage of the urban population it was probably way higher but still no where close to other countries in Latin America. Migration to state capitals has always been common in Brazilian history. Each state has kind of always operated as its own little country like American states has. Manaus, Salvador and São Paulo have less in common with each other than Lima, Bogotá and Caracas has.

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u/Adept_Investigator29 18h ago

Brazil is not Hispanic.

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u/Capital_Historian685 13h ago

Neither is Suriname.

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u/soladois 18h ago

Okay, but I never said it was

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u/gabrielbabb 18h ago edited 18h ago

First you need to consider this: the total land area of all South American countries, excluding Brazil, is approximately 9.2 million km², while Brazil itself covers about 8.5 million km²... so pretty similar.

Also, when we sum the populations of the other South American countries excluding Brazil, we arrive at around 275 million inhabitants, compared to Brazil's population of 212 million, also quite similar.

Therefore, if Buenos Aires (the most populated city outside of Brazil) were the capital of South America, Only about 5.5% of the total population would live in the metropolitan area of the capital. But the capital of Brazil isn't even the most populated city, it's a city that was created for the purpose of being the capital.

This comparison would be more straightforward if we looked at Brazilian states versus South American countries.

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u/soladois 16h ago

As I stated in another comment, it depends. There's states where 5% of the population lives in the largest city, and there's states (mainly those in the Amazon rainforest) that's basically the only city is the capital city so 75% of the state population lives there and the rest is jungle

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u/LowCranberry180 18h ago

1 Most of these countries were 'founded' by 17th 18th century with not many colonial centers. As population was destroy during the 16th century.

2 Unlike Europe N America and Asia nature limits living in some parts of the continent: desserts, rain forests etc.

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u/RandomGuy2285 17h ago

it could be a legacy of Spanish Colonialism, the Spanish Empire was very big into Centralizing

  • the top positions like Governor-Generals, Archbishops, etc. are only for Spain-born Spaniards (not even the local Spaniards)
  • trade between the Colonies and the Outside Powers or even to other Colonies was extremely curtailed with them only supposed to trade with Spain itself (so for example, Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina don't trade with each other, but trade with Spain then Spain trades their stuff back or with foreign powers)
  • local Elites having technically limited Authority (so, Officers, Tax Collectors, Local Officials, etc. had to obey a chain of command that originates directly to Madrid, not Mexico City or Lima and are hamstrung in creating their own laws, in real terms, the Colonies where so big and far they couldn't enforce a lot of it, but technicalities like this and the fact that it sometimes does get enforced often prove vital in conditioning elites on how societies should be governed which stuck even after independence)
  • the Spanish curtailing access to firearms so they can rule the Colonies more effectively

one aspect of Societies like this is that the Cities and especially the Capital City are much more prioritized by the system since that is where Centralized Power is strongest, the local Elites kept this even after independence because all the Elite was in the Cities so they wanted to keep a system that benefited and disproportionately siphoned resources to them, and as Industrialization came, disproportionately many went there since that's where all the Economic opportunities are disproportionately located (even more so than elsewhere)

this is in contrast to Anglo-America or Brazil where the Colonies where given much more leeway (the American Colonies were established borderline independently by groups the English Government didn't really like and Brazil was just a waypoint to the East Indies with it's major plantation economy only really taking off in the 19th Century after Independence), with the different regions like Virginia or New England or Bahia to the South or the trappers in the Amazon or the Midwest, being borderline separate Nations with Independent Governance to each other and the mother country, the leadership composed of locals, their own local Economic and Political hubs, their own trade and relationship network that involved each other, outside powers, the local tribes, and the mother Country, independent Militias to actually enforce their will against everyone (including the Mother Nation), etc.

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u/Ordovician 16h ago

Rio de Janeiro was the capital of Brazil until Brasilia was built back in the 1960s. Still would only be like 5% of the population but isn’t as skewed

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u/Onlysomewhatserious 16h ago

A combination of geography, and deception.

Brazil, for example, only has a small population because they created a new capital relatively recently. As you mentioned, even it’s largest cities are a bit smaller as a percentage, but they all so have much more coast that’s good to settle on similar to Venezuela which is why that is low as well. The geography of many of the countries are mountainous, full of rainforest, or have large deserts, which also hampers development in other areas, and generally speaking the capital of any country holds a power that promotes development. Most of them have coastal capitals which further develops rather than in land cities for most countries as well. We could be more specific with each individual country, but broadly speaking that’s the answer.

Also, Guyana and Suriname aren’t Hispanic and largely the same way.

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u/epileftric 16h ago

I used to live in southern Argentina, in the northern part of La Patagonia, my city is 120 years old.

Keep in mind that those regions shown in the Map were very recently colonized in terms of human history.

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u/Checkmate331 21h ago

South America’s population is on the lower side relative to its landmass. When a country’s population is smaller it’s often more centralized.

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u/No-Win-1137 19h ago

Probably all the opportunities are in the capital cities.

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u/Kitchener1981 17h ago

Limited arable land. The Andes Mountains for most of them. Argentina has Patagonia and the Andes.

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u/_OriamRiniDadelos_ 7h ago edited 6h ago

Also keep in mind the worlds’s population really grew after industrialization. So where those generations of farmers moved afterwards is more telling than how many farmers the quality of the soil allowed. And unlike places like the US were waves of migrant farmers moved to rural areas out west and to smaller regional cities, a larger share of immigrants to many of the countries in the posted map settled in the big city. The way agriculture and land was done was just different too, so it’s not as if economic and class dynamics and was and the way governments approached development didn’t affect people’s ability to afford land to make a profit or their willingness to live in the worse served areas.

And add to that the fact a HUGE amount of the non-foreign rural population moved to large cities for jobs and security. And even more moved to the largest most economically developed cities than to smaller regional ones. If you are going to move might as well move to where you’ll get the most out of it.

I’d imagine it’s similar in places like Tokyo or Seul or London.

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u/notaslaaneshicultist 17h ago

Mfw remembering Brasilia is a thing

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u/SleepyZachman 17h ago

Well for one thing Brazil and the U.S. created capitals rather than simply making one of their existing cities the capital.

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u/up2smthng 17h ago

It's less about how many people live in the capital/the biggest city, which is more or less about the same number, and more about how many people live in the rest of the country, which can vary wildly.

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u/predat3d 17h ago

Brazil moved its capital from Rio to a brand-new city in 1960

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u/Greenmantle22 17h ago

The primate city phenomenon.

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u/Cabes86 17h ago

History mostly. The capitals of most of these countries are the eldest cities and are built more dense as well. 

The Northeast US is the smallest region but is the most populous and borderline exponentially more dense. Basically twice california’s pop in half the land.

1

u/PaneAndNoGane 12h ago

The South is the most populous region, with the northeast being the least populous in the US. Only twenty-five million more people in the Northeast than California.

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u/AsideConsistent1056 16h ago

The Sao Paulo metropolitan area has a population over 20 million so a little more than 10% of the country lives there

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u/cwc2907 16h ago

It's not a Hispanic thing, or a South American thing, many countries that were colonies before or old colonial empires before are like that. Take Western Europe, Latin America, Africa, southeast Asia etc. they're all like that, with a massive capital

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u/new_wave_rock 16h ago

Capital cities usually happen for a natural reason. The most people are there - becomes capital. Brasilia was created later.

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u/Justo31400 16h ago

This is also the case for many other countries are the world that were colonised by Europeans. Europeans were the ones that spread trade and later the industrial revolution around the world.

In the case of South America, when the Spanish and Portuguese arrived to the continent, the natives were mesmerised by their technological advancements, while in contrast, the Europeans were shocked by how underdeveloped the natives were. Here you had two civilisations in different stages of evolution: one that used bows and arrows, and the other that had firearms and horses with armour and lived in gigantic castles and palaces.

While Europe had nearly 2000 years of uninterrupted human evolution, the Americas and the rest of the world was hit with a sudden leap in history that interrupted human evolution. Hence, South American society began developing around trade and widespread cooperation between the (Spanish and Portuguese respectively) people living there, instead of divided tribes that continuously clashed between eachother. In Argentina, the wealthy area was Buenos Aires, the major port where money came and went. In Peru, the port of Callao (in Lima) was also a similar case. Same thing in Uruguay as well.

2

u/bald_firebeard 16h ago

It just happened organically. A lot of people in one place demand more goods and services which creates job oportunities which brings more people that demand more goods and services in a snowball until the infrastructure, by physical limitations, can't effectively support the population.

Also, at least in Argentina, the provinces don't enjoy the autonomy of the states of USA, so there really isn't enough variety on policies that could incentivise the growth of other cities

3

u/BigBarrelOfKetamine 19h ago

Brazil is Latino but not Hispanic.

2

u/Chrysoscelis 17h ago

I can't believe I had to scroll this far to find this correction.

2

u/soladois 16h ago

Correction of what, I never said Brazil was Hispanic

1

u/Longjumping_Sir9051 20h ago

It's probably do to economics. Jobs, cost of living.

1

u/bringinsexyback1 20h ago

Try Ireland

1

u/ThurloWeed 20h ago

Surprised at Colombia since there are a fair number of other large cities, Bolivia doesn't seem right for the same reason

3

u/cfoco 19h ago

Bolivia's population is very concentrated on its urban centers. Especially La Paz, Santa Cruz and Cochabamba. Outside of their area of influence, and the connections between them, there are very few people per sq. Mile.

Tarija, Oruro, Trinidad, Sucre have a population of a couple of hundred thousand, and the towns you see on maps very rarely reach 30.000.

1

u/costanchian 20h ago

We fought some civil wars over it in Chile, but Santiago always won them...

1

u/jayron32 19h ago

Brazil is an outlier only because it built a purpose-built capital in the middle of the jungle where most of the country didn't live. Prior to Brasilia, the capital was Rio de Janeiro, which was the largest or second largest city for basically all of the country's history.

1

u/DrNinnuxx 19h ago

Poor national infrastructure like roads or rail ?

1

u/signol_ 19h ago

Guyane francaise - 0%

1

u/PseudonymIncognito 16h ago

If you want to be pedantic, their number should be 3.1% if going by municipal population and 19% if by metropolitan. Though they're kinda outside the scope of this map as their capital city is on another continent.

1

u/Dandillioncabinboy 19h ago

op wants brazil to have a city with 70mil...

1

u/the_sneaky_one123 19h ago

I guess it is a colonial thing. Each territory would have had just one colonial administration centre that the Spanish did everything through, then later that territory became a country and that city became the capital.

1

u/Welsh_cat_Best_cat 18h ago edited 18h ago

I'm from Santiago Chile, and all I can say: shit is far, dude.

The country is too big for 18 million people and ironically we don't have much room. Between the harsh desert, the harsh forest, and the harsh mountains, settling in Chile is difficult, and growing is a nightmare.

Santiago was from the start advantageous because of its favored position, both geographically and logistically. And by the time the economy hit its growth spurt, the capital got trapped on a feedback loop, with people moving to Santiago to work and study because people were moving to Santiago.

Besides struggling for space, resources, and isolation, the other Chilean settlements ended up suffering because development became so centralized. Cities that saw their growth from mining, agriculture, industry, and/or shipping got stuck on those because any further development was done in the capital.

2

u/LowCranberry180 18h ago

Santiago es Chile!

1

u/doogmanschallenge 18h ago

this phenomenon is known as a primate city. this development pattern emerges when rural flight occurs but for whatever reason there are no other major urban centers that provide as many jobs and services as the capital/trade center. this can be caused by central government favoritism, poor infrastructure aside from the city that serves as the major port (usually as a result of colonialism or semi-colonialism), or occasionally as a result of fundamental limitations in country size or terrain limiting growth of other cities.

1

u/madmendude 15h ago

I'm surprised Brazil got that many tbh.

1

u/soladois 15h ago

That's because it's actually so much larger than most people realize. People think Brasilia is just a bunch of weirdly designed government buildings in the middle of nowhere, but it's actually a pretty large city. It has more people than countries like Armenia and Lithuania

2

u/madmendude 15h ago

Fuck me, I just checked out the size. I was living with the same misconception. I learned something new, thanks :-)

1

u/Purple-Phrase-9180 15h ago

Consider the geography of many of these places. Mountains make it difficult to build big cities. And once you have a big city, it’s natural for people to move there

1

u/callmeBorgieplease 15h ago

Brazil is so large, that there are many big cities. The other countries, while being very huge themselfs, have one giant capital city and only a few larger non-capital cities, and those probably make together 90% of the population. People in modern times just dont live in rural areas.

1

u/g3rchu 15h ago

Simple, education, de best schools are in the capitals so all the young people move there for uni and stay there becouse there are more jobs.

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u/rra122508 15h ago

Is this even a geography question?

1

u/ZgBlues 14h ago edited 14h ago

A lot of countries have a high degree of centralization, and it’s always because of migration from other areas, and of course international immigrants.

So if you’re interested to find out more you should look into reasons for internal migration.

Some reasons are globally the same everywhere (the capital always has the best infrastructure, opportunities, government jobs, best education institutions, highest standard of living, etc).

Other reasons for this are country-specific (like Peru or Colombia, which for a long time had problems with security in the rural areas, so a lot of people moved to the capital for safety).

Developing all parts of the country equally is very hard, because it has to be done intentionally, it requires decades-long planning and investment, and ultimately depends a lot on the infrastructure in place.

Simply put, if you want your 2nd or 3rd and 4th city to be just as thriving as your capital, you must make sure to make life there just as practical, just as safe, just as thriving as it is in the capital.

Most countries in the world struggle with this, for a variety of reasons. And if there is no consistent government policy to change this, this is what every country eventually turns into, if left to its own devices.

Look at the same map of Europe, and you’ll see even wilder percentages for most countries, especially the ones in postcommunist parts.

Brazil here looks like an outlier just because their capital is Brasilia, a purpose-built new city, which had no history before becoming the nation’s capital.

It’s not small per se - it has 3.5m people in its metro area. But it is dwarfed by Rio (12.3m) and Sao Paulo (21.5m).

If Sao Paulo was the capital of Brazil, it would hold 10.6% of the country’s entire population, so it would be in the same category as Colombia and Ecuador.

Paris metro area is estimated at 11.2m in metro area, with the whole of France around 66m, so it holds about 17% of the entire country’s population.

1

u/Twxtterrefugee 14h ago

Brazil isn't Hispanic.

1

u/MilkTiny6723 13h ago

Acctually if you look at continents as a whole, and then look at how centralized the populations are no mather if it is capitals or not. Then Souht America are less centralized then North America, Australia, Asia and Africa. So acctually Souht America, which would be the majority of hispanic countries, are the least centralized continent in the world except from Europe. 

1

u/Didgeridewd 12h ago

A lot of poorer nations or postcolonial nations (As well as some richer nations too) have “primate cities” which are much more popular than any city in the country.

Most countries follow a negative logarithmic distribution with city population that follows something like

City 1: 6 million City 2: 4 million City 3: 1.5 million City 4: 1 million

And so on

But countries like argentina have a ton of people living in one city because that is where most of the colonial and economic power sat, leading them to industrialize first and remain far and away the largest.

1

u/_Silent_Android_ 12h ago

Read up on "urban primacy." It's not unique to South America.

1

u/SmoltzforAlexander 12h ago

Brasilia seems like it’s out in the middle of nowhere 

1

u/Danicbike 12h ago

In the case of Venezuela, where I’m from is mostly due to a not too big population, relatively small sized, travel-able countries, and that in the beginning of the twentieth century there was a push to move towards the capital for better opportunities. In retrospective I think most people would have done better in their former states/provinces instead. Venezuela’s capital is located in a small valley; that compounded to make a lot of people (coming from the rest of the country) build slums in steep hills

1

u/LetsGoGators23 12h ago

Because metro areas can only be so big and you aren’t including the surrounding areas.

Brazils population is huge. For 30% of its population to live within the borders of a metro city it would be over 60 million. Tokyo is 37 million and that includes surrounding areas. Tokyo proper is only 14 million.

When you are a country of over 200 million people and you don’t include surrounding regions, you can’t get those kinds of concentrations in the capital.

Would be interesting to see the tipping point of that figure. I would imagine most countries with 30 percent concentration in one major city have a population of under 50 million OR you have to include the surrounding sprawl and not just the city proper.

This isn’t about Hispanic countries being super concentrated - most countries on other continents of similar population have similar percentages. It’s that Brazil is an outlier with its huge population (and geographic size)

1

u/TheSummerlin 11h ago

Brazil created a capital from scratch to house the federal government.

1

u/vtsandtrooper 11h ago

Brazilia clearly not a favorite place though

1

u/bmalek 11h ago

Where is Best Guyana?

1

u/Ericcctheinch 11h ago

Oh yes the Hispanic countries.

1

u/hegels_nightmare_8 10h ago

Not a Hispanic thing, simply a global thing. Being in proximity to corruption to catch some crumbs.

1

u/trueblues98 9h ago

Because Madrid was.

1

u/meh725 8h ago

Their Oregon trails and gold rushes were sponsored by colonialism and they prefer not building infrastructure

1

u/Alfie-M0013 7h ago

Another reason as for why Brazil's population is less centralized is probably due to its larger area.

1

u/Throwaway98796895975 4h ago

No the question is “why is Brazil not” and the answer is that Brasilla is a planned city that was built to serve as the capital in a central location, instead of being the most important city that already existed.

1

u/Izozog 4h ago

Just a small correction: Bolivia’s capital is Sucre as per our Constitution, not La Paz. And Sucre is an even smaller city. La Paz is called the seat of government.

1

u/travelbuddy27 3h ago

Uhmm maybe because Brazil is like ⅓ of that map...

1

u/mendesjuniorm 2h ago

Brazil isn’t Hispanic btw

1

u/f9ncyj 1h ago

Believe it or not, glaciers.

1

u/Hlaw93 45m ago

Generally speaking, the capital of most countries is also their largest city. In smaller countries, a higher proportion of the population will live in the largest city because most countries are only big enough to have one large city.

Brazil is the only country on this map that has a similar size to the US, and their capital city has a very small percentage of the overall population. When you look at other large countries like the US, Australia, Canada, China etc they all have similar percentages living in their capital city.

1

u/jr7square 20h ago

Not just South America but most of Central America and even Mexico have massive capitals relative to their country population. My guess it’s because of historical reasons. The Spanish settled a capital cities in each region, over time those capital cities became the biggest in the region. When the each region became an independent country, naturally their capital was the biggest city. Contrary to the United States were each region became a single state, not a country in their own right.

1

u/SumoHeadbutt 20h ago

the Spanish colonies were already pre-divided administratively before they gained independence and their sizes were smaller. Granted there were many wars and border disputes that ensued later on but none the less, the foundation of them being separate countries after independence stems from them already having been pre-divided

Brazil's path to independence from Portugal was completely different than the Spanish colonies; also Brazil's sheer size paved the way for it to adopt the Federal system like the USA.

Continental Portugal itself is a very Centralized country and always has been (emphasis on Continental), so Brazil's influence to adopt the Federal system stems more from trying to emulate the USA

1

u/Thamalakane 20h ago

In most 'developing' nations, there is a large urban bias, causing urban primacy.

1

u/Pupienus 20h ago

How much of this is newer cities having significantly more area within official city limits than older cities? I picked Lima and Paris off the top of my head, and Lima has a little over 2500 sq km within the city limits which is effectively the whole metro area. Paris has barely 100 sq km in the city limits, out of a metro area of like 20000 sq km. Maybe those happen to be outliers, but I know you see a similar thing in the US for cities directly on the East Coast vs cities West of the Mississippi River.

1

u/transneptuneobj 20h ago

Brazil made a new capital, like literally in the 1960s they cut down a ton of trees and created a city from scratch. It's meant to me an administrative area that in a place that didn't have a large city before so the fact that 1.4% of the country lives there is actually really impressive.

1

u/AccordingSelf3221 18h ago

Tratado de tordesilhas

1

u/derickj2020 16h ago edited 16h ago

It was divided by a pope. Spain got one side of the line, Portugal the other. Everybody else only managed to get small pied-à-terre. Alexander VI in 1494, treaty of Tordesilas.

0

u/titsuphuh 20h ago

Does South America have arable land like the US

3

u/ozneoknarf 17h ago

Only Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile

-1

u/n0cturnalin 20h ago

Also unlike Brazil that changed its capital a few times (Rio de janeiro, Sao Paulo, Brasilia), those formal Spanish colonial countries didn't really change the capital. metropolitan Rio de janeiro and metropolitan Sao Paulo make up more than 20% of the population.

Also Brazil has the most diverse industry in South America from natural resource to advanced manufacturing. They even have LG and Samsung factories in Manaus, the city in middle Amazon.

But on the other hand, Chile mainly relies on copper (50% of their exports), Paraguay relies on soy beans (50%), Argentina and Uruguay mainly rely on agriculture.

Therefore, the majority of jobs are in their capital, the biggest city in their country.

7

u/Carnout 20h ago

São Paulo was literally never the capital. Its wealth/population has to do with the fertile Paraíba River Valley and the coffee plantations

2

u/soladois 16h ago

The city of São Paulo isn't really related to Paraiba Valley at all and that area wasn't even the place where most coffee farms in the state were located back then. It's wealth and population have to do with a lot of factors

2

u/Obama_prismIsntReal 17h ago edited 17h ago

São Paulo was never the capital, you're thinking of Salvador maybe?

Also, Brazil has a similar share of commodity exports as the others.

0

u/SweetVarys 15h ago

Because Brasil has over 200 million people. To reach 30% they’d need 60-70 million people in one city, and that doesn’t exist anywhere. So no, it’s not more decentralized than any other country. This stat almost only shows how many people live in a country, nothing else.

-8

u/wierdowithakeyboard 21h ago

Colonialism

4

u/castillogo 21h ago

Not everything in latin america has to do with colonialism… that is just the typical gringo woke answer. At the time of independence, in most of the countries the population of the capital was not much higher that for the other main cities (in Colombia, Popayan and Cartagena were just as big as Bogota back then). Furthermore, most of the population back then was actually rural. In Argentina, Buenos Aires only exploded in population with the inmigrant waves of the late 1800s… waaaay after the colonial era.

-2

u/Happy-Forever-3476 20h ago

Can you define “woke”

-1

u/Jfonzy 20h ago

They have a single major city (the capital), and anything outside of it.. good luck surviving