Talk:Municipalities of Brazil

Initial comments

This list needs some clarification at the top -- at the very least, the criterion for inclusion (population > N? County seat? Historical importance?) Jorge Stolfi 16:30, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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Redux, sorry to get in your way, but your wording for the DF explanation is very stiff, awkward, and confusing (e.g. the doubly-nested parenthesis). That is why I tried to fix it. Why do you think that my wording is incorrect?Jorge Stolfi 05:21, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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Stolfi, as a matter of fact, when i rechecked i realized that the "grammar mistake" was most likely a typo, as it read "it is divisions", when you probably meant "its divisions". I agree that the text i wrote is not exactly primal, but it was meant to leave no doubt as to the estructure of the administrative division of the Federal District. Technically, the Brazilian Federal District has no divisions, the administrative regions are just a method to facilitate its running. Thus, it would be innacurate to affirm that the federal district has divisions that are just named differently. Furthermore, i meant to explain clearly that the denomination "satellite cities" is just a nickname, and has no official meaning. Again, technically there are no cities in the Federal District. Please bear in mind that most of the people reading the article will have no knowledge of the Brazilian adminstrative division, and in order to allow them to understand all that i have just listed, the text needed to be simple and leave no room for questioning. As i read your text, i thought it was not that clear in that way. For instance, it led to believe that "satellite cities" is the official name of the administrative regions of the Federal District. If you recheck, you will find that i have already altered the text to make it more clear. I always welcome, of course, any contributions to help improve the quality of the article, which is what Wikipedia is all about. In fact, i thank you for the interest you took in the article and hope you'll keep helping me. Redux

Redux, note that your own text says that DF is "divided" into those administrative regions, and dividing something creates divisions, by definition. Also the sentence is very bad English (I am no Shakespeare either, but trust me), and the nested parenthesis MUST go. Would you be satisfied with this rewrite:

According to the Brazilian Constitution, the Federal District cannot be divided into municipalities or cities. It has however a purely administrative divison into regions (informally called cities, even though they have neither official city status nor elected local governments): they comprise Brasília, the nation's capital, and the so-called satellite cities:

IMHO, this is much better English, and as clear as it can be. Besides, readers of this page are unlikely to care about the subtleties of our Constitution (so there is no need to use boldface in cannot).

By the way: the explanatory texts don't have to be in italics. If you use upright font, then you can use italics for special meanings like cities, which is the standard convention (rather than boldface). All the best,Jorge Stolfi 21:25, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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Stolfi, here it is: that's too much polemics over a small text that is not even the main purpose of the article. If you think about it, all that explanation about the administrative division of the Brazilian Federal District should be in the DF's own article, which already exists but is just a stub. Since i'm focused on uploading the complete list of cities (which is a lot!), let's do this: the "DF little explanation" is up to you. Your last suggestion above seems to work, but i really think it would be better placed in the DF's own article. Redux

Statistics and similars

To whom it may concern, this article is a simple list of the cities (municipalities) in Brazil. The goal is to have only one entry for each city, which will be listed as simply as possible. Statistical information (e.g.: largest, more important or more industrialized) are not to be listed here. First, this is simply not within the scope of this article (which is already quite long as it is), as the information would be better off in specific articles (Brazil, the individual articles of each city or maybe a new article on Brazilian geo-political statistics). Second, as aforementioned, extra lists would result in double-listing some cities, which is to be avoided here. Regards, Redux 14:08, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The lists were added to countries from Afghanistan to China, please tell me as to why Brazil is so special as to not have a list like every other country in that range. (Except belgium and canada where lists already existed). Double linking is not an issue, and is even more important considering how many communities are listed on the page. It would certainly be easier for some one to say find Salvador, Brazil at the bottom than going to its respective state section. Earl Andrew 18:13, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I cannot account for what has been done in lists regarding other countries. What I've said above reflects the state of affairs in this article. This is particularly peculiar because internal political divisions usually vary considerably from country to country, and any particular list is usually shaped according to the ideas of those involved with any given article as to the best form of presenting the list. In the case of this article, the intention was to present a comprehensive list of municipalities, also as a means of estimulating the creation of articles on those cities (notice that the large majority of the links are red, but the list has already helped users in creating many articles on Brazilian municipalities). The idea was to simplify as much as possible and not double-list any city (hence the state capitals not being listed in their specific state list - which means that, in the case of the exampe you gave, Salvador, as a state capital, will be found in the second section of the article, dedicated to state capitals, rather than under the list of municipalities in Bahia; and there's always the Ctlr+F resource...). There are over 5 thousand municipalities (cities, for all practical effects in Brazil) in Brazil, and simply listing every one of them once already makes the article quite long (89 kb at the moment), and there are entire states worth of municipalities yet to be added. Adding sub-lists on statistic data is, as I said, out of the scope set for this particular article, and since they are compared nation-wide (and to compare is not the objective here, which is to list), they would probably go better in the Brazil article or maybe some othe more specific article. Not to mention that there is a broad spectrum of lists that could be added: you added a list of largest cities in terms of population, but others, upon seeing that, might decide to add lists of the most industrialized, the smallest municipalities, largest in terms of territory, and so on. If it is the case of adding statistic information on Brazilian cities in the form of lists, we might create a specific article on that, if that doesn't already exist (multiple lists based on one theme - here, Brazilian municipalities - are not uncommon, as in the cases you named yourself: Belgium and Canada) and then link that article here. Regards, Redux 19:48, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It is clear that this article should be subdivided as it is getting way to long anyways. Have something like List of cities in Acre and so on. Earl Andrew 03:00, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

What is a "city"

The title of this article is unaccurate. Not all municipalities are cities, despite the common use of the word "cidade" in Brazil. Pirapora do Bom Jesus is not a city, not even close to such a category. It's just a municipality. It's a matter of choice: Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia or not? If it is, articles should have titles and contents that focus on precision and accuracy. An article such as List of cities in Acre (as proposed above) is completely out of question, since Acre has only two municipalities that could be consider cities: Rio Branco and Cruzeiro do Sul. --Dantadd 11:29, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I understand what you are saying, but we also need to maintain some kind of pattern, in order to provide a consistency that will make it easier for readers. As you said yourself, the word "cidade", which is a correlate to "city", is used commonly in Brazil, which alone would be sufficient to justify the title of the article. The use of the word "municipality", which is the form in English for "município", is a matter of political choice on the part of the country (others call it county, or canton, etc.) — noticing that the role played by the local administrative division is also a question of national organization, which is not the scope of this list. We need to explain this accurately in our article about Brazilian political divisions. This, however, is a list of cities, plain and simple. And to top it all up, the official source used for this listing, the IBGE site, names its list of Brazilian municipalities as "IBGE Cidades" (here), which is yet more evidence that using the term "city", as cor--Dantadd 15:02, 19 May 2006 (UTC)relate of "cidade", is not inaccurate. Furthermore, I believe you may be confusing a couple of concepts: what doesn't coincide necessarily, from the technical point of view, is a municipality and its urban area, meaning that rural areas that may be relatively distant from the city, are also part of the same municipality, but the urban area of any municipality may be referred to as a "city". And since all municipalities have an urban area, however small, they all have a "city" (or town, or village). This leads to the next point: the distinction between cities and towns and/or villages. This article includes all of them (there are articles out there that focus on towns only, and those are called "list of towns"), which causes the use of the more general, or inclusive, term, which is "city". Regards, Redux 14:33, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Well...as an interesting character played by Francisco Milani used to say: "comigo é no popular". That's what you're saying and it's a pitty. Pirapora do Bom Jesus or Arceburgo are not cities and should not be included in a list of cities, simple like that. --Dantadd 15:49, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Please notice the final part of my previous comment. You are talking about a distinction between cities, towns and villages. This list includes all of them (all urban areas listed by IBGE as being politically independent), which causes it to be named after the most inclusive term, "city". It is possible to create a "list of towns in Brazil", where only small urban areas, such as Pirapora do Bom Jesus and similar places, would be included. Redux 17:02, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

But the question is just the opposite! All cities are also municipalities, but just some municipalities are cities! São Paulo is a city and a municipality. Pirapora do Bom Jesus is just a municipality and not a city. A list of cities should contain just cities, and a list of municipalities should show all entities politically independent. The term "city" is specific, not all-inclusive. --Dantadd 15:02, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

No, again: São Paulo is a municipality whose territory coincides with that of its urban area. Other municipalities (arguably most of those in the country side) have (the municipalities) a total territory that is larger than its urban area. All municipalities, however, have an urban area, however small. Those can be referred to as "city" (even though they'd be technically a town or a village). That's what I was saying: "city" is the more inclusive term, and it is used in this list which includes all cities, towns and villages alike. Notice that even municipalities that are mainly rural will have a [tiny as it may be] urban area, serving as an administrative center and trade point — Pirapora do Bom Jesus, to stick to your example, certainly has an urban area, possibly made up by the Town Hall, the City Counsil and other venues (a church, local market, etc.), even if the municipality's territory is 99% rural; that's certainly no more than a village, but it can be referred to as a "city" generally (as it is done commonly).
Still, technically it would not be wrong to name the article "list of municipalities". This is not done because, as I said in my original post, the term "cities" is not wrong, as per my recent rationale and the previously linked IBGE site (named "IBGE Cidades"), and it is the standard naming used on Wikipedia for this kind of list-article. And again, it would not be unprecedented to start a separate article that would list only cities per se — in fact, we already have the List of major cities in Brazil, and another that would list only municipalities that are not equiped with a "real" city, although I don't believe that it would be necessary. Redux 17:20, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Possible errors

While organizing the municipalities by mesoregion and microregion, I noticed a few cases where a municipality was not contiguous with the rest of its meso/microregion. I did not want to speculate that IBGE had made an error, so I left them as they were. But if someone knows for sure that these are incorrect, feel free to fix them or else let me know and I will.

• In Alagoas: Jequiá da Praia muncipality is separated from the rest of Litoral Norte Alagoano microregion by about 85 km. It was formerly part of Sao Miguel dos Campos microregion.
• In Bahia:
  • Centro Norte Baiano mesoregion — Amélia Rodrigues municipality in Feira de Santana microregion is surrounded by Metropolitana de Salvador mesoregion.
  • Alagoinhas microregion — Barrocas municipality is surrounded by Serrinha Microregion.
• In Mato Grosso do Sul: Coxim is separated from the rest of Sudoeste de Mato Grosso do Sul Mesoregion by about 260 km. It was formerly part of Centro Norte de Mato Grosso do Sul mesoregion.

There were also a couple that seemed suspicious, although they are not discontiguous:

• In Piauí, Pau D'Arco do Piauí was formerly part of Teresina microregion, but is now part of Campo Maior microregion.
• In Rio Grande do Sul, Pedras Altas was in Jaguarao microregion, but is now in Serras de Sudeste microregion.

--Lasunncty (talk) 00:55, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I fixed the Coxim problem as it should be, being in the "Alto Taquari" microregion of the "Center-North Mato Grosso do Sul" mesgoregion, not in the "Southwest Mato Grosso do Sul" mesoregion. jlog3000 (talk) 15:29, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

dubious statement

The last phrase currently states:

"...forming exclaves or seceding from the state or union is expressly forbidden."

I cannot find any reference to this statement in the constitution. Can someone provide a more specific citation? The reason I ask is because there are three municipalities that do in fact have exclaves (as of 2005). --Lasunncty (talk) 12:32, 27 October 2011 (UTC)