Urban typology: the example of the state of Rio de Janeiro

This article intends to analyze the fluminense spatial organization, based upon a typology that will contemplate the urbanization rate of the state's municipalities and comprises the indexes of demographic dimension and urbanization rate. Choosing demographic dimension allows for a discriminative interpretation of both consumption and production within a municipality, due to the elected variable (population) and its proximity to the actual bulk of consumers. As for the choice of urbanization rate, it lies upon the acknowledgement that the bigger the ratio of urban population the greater will be the expression of urban activity - commerce, services and industry. The methodology used in constructing such typology consisted in matrically crossing the values of population (demographic dimension) and of the ratio between the latter and the urban population (urbanization rate). Thus, these matrical crossings led to the identification of three major sets of municipalities: urban, in transition to urban and rural.