| Despite the immense expanses of the interior,
roughly two-thirds of Brazil's population live on or near the coast; and well
over half live in cities - even in the Amazon. In Rio and Sao Paulo, Brazil has
two of the world's great metropolises, and nine other cities have over a million
inhabitants. Yet Brazil still thinks of itself as a frontier country, and certainly
the deeper into the interior you go, the thinner the population becomes. Nevertheless,
the frontier communities have expanded relentlessly during the last fifty years,
usually hand in hand with the planned expansion of the road network into remote
regions. | |
