São Paulo leads the ranking of cities with development potential.

Vinicius Lisboa - Reporter for Agência Brasil

São Paulo was considered the Brazilian city with the greatest potential for development in 2016, in a ranking that evaluated 700 municipalities in the country. The research is in its second edition and was released today (7) by the companies Urban Systems and Sator, at the Connected Smart Cities 2016 event.

The study analyzed 11 sectors of cities based on more than 70 indicators. Mobility and accessibility, urban planning, environment, technology and innovation, health, education, entrepreneurship, governance, economy, security, and energy were evaluated.

Last year, Rio de Janeiro held the top position, but the focus on mobility and accessibility earned São Paulo the title this year. This assessment was influenced by the implementation of 150 kilometers (km) of bike lanes in 2015, in addition to the allocation of 460 km of exclusive bus lanes.

Sator's CEO, Paula Faria, explained that São Paulo stands out in mobility due to its history of investments in the sector, which spans beyond a single administration. "It was already in first place [in mobility] last year and will remain so for a long time, because these are systematic investments over many years. There's the subway, trains, bus corridors, and the bike lanes have improved even more," she says, adding that new transparency indicators adopted this year also yielded a good score for the city.

São Paulo was also considered the best city in technology and innovation. The study highlights that the capital has a good supply of communication infrastructure and is ahead of the others in the number of patents registered and the amount of funding for research grants.

In second place, Rio de Janeiro was considered the best city in Brazil in terms of economy and entrepreneurship. Rio concentrates more than 20 business incubators and has five technology hubs, and the research also highlights the weight of the capital in the Rio de Janeiro state economy, accounting for 50% of the state's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The list of the top ten continues with Curitiba, Brasília, Belo Horizonte, Vitória, Florianópolis, Barueri, Recife, and Campinas. The capital of Espírito Santo was the best evaluated in health and education, Belo Horizonte was first in the environment category, and Curitiba had the best governance and urban planning.

Despite not reaching the top ten in the overall ranking, Ipojuca, in Pernambuco, came in first place in safety. Guarapuava, in Paraná, was the highest-ranked city in energy.

City size

The research also produced rankings taking into account the size of the cities. Amparo, in São Paulo, came in first place in the category of up to 100 inhabitants. Vitória was considered the best city with up to 500 inhabitants.

To select the 700 cities evaluated from among the more than 5 Brazilian municipalities, the researchers took into account the availability of information, the participation of all regions, and the inclusion of municipalities of all sizes. Thomaz Assumpção, president of Urban Systems, which conducted the research, says that obtaining information was one of the biggest difficulties of the study, which was based solely on official data.

"Sometimes, the public's perception isn't the same, but we don't deal with perception, we deal with numerology," said Assumpção.