In 2024, approximately 22.81 million people lived in the São Paulo metropolitan area, making it the biggest in Latin America and the Caribbean and the fifth most populated in the world. The homonymous state of São Paulo was also the most populous federal entity in the country. The second place for the region was Mexico City with 22.51 million inhabitants.

Brazil's cities

Brazil is home to two large metropolises, only counting the population within the city limits, São Paulo had approximately 12.4 million inhabitants, and Rio de Janeiro around 6.8 million inhabitants. It also contains a number of smaller, but well known cities such as Brasília, Salvador, Belo Horizonte and many others, which report between 2 and 3 million inhabitants each. As a result, the country's population is primarily urban, with nearly 85 percent of inhabitants living in cities.

Mexico City

Mexico City's metropolitan area ranks fifth in the ranking of most populated cities in the world. Founded over the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan in 1521 after the Spanish conquest as the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the city still stands as one of the most important in Latin America. Nevertheless, the preeminent economic, political, and cultural position of Mexico City has not prevented the metropolis from suffering the problems affecting the rest of the country, namely, inequality and violence. Only in 2021, the city registered a crime incidence of 45,336 reported cases for every 100,000 inhabitants and around 32 percent of the population lived under the poverty line.

As of 2024, three out of ten Latin American and Caribbean cities with the highest local purchasing power were located in Mexico. With an index score of 51.3, people in Querétaro had the highest domestic purchasing power in Mexico. In South America, the city with the highest domestic purchasing power for 2024 was Montevideo, scoring 53 index points.

This statistic shows the biggest cities in El Salvador in 2020. In 2020, approximately 284 thousand people lived in Soyapango, making it the biggest city in El Salvador.

This statistic shows the ten biggest cities in Argentina in 2019. In 2019, approximately 15.17 million people lived in Buenos Aires, making it the biggest city in Argentina.

Based on land area, Brazil is the largest country in Latin America by far, with a total area of over 8.5 million square kilometers. Argentina follows with almost 2.8 million square kilometers. Cuba, whose surface area extends over almost 111,000 square kilometers, is the Caribbean country with the largest territory.

Brazil: a country with a lot to offer

Brazil's borders reach nearly half of the South American subcontinent, making it the fifth-largest country in the world and the third-largest country in the Western Hemisphere. Along with its landmass, Brazil also boasts the largest population and economy in the region. Although Brasília is the capital, the most significant portion of the country's population is concentrated along its coastline in the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

South America: a region of extreme geographic variation

With the Andes mountain range in the West, the Amazon Rainforest in the East, the Equator in the North, and Cape Horn as the Southern-most continental tip, South America has some of the most diverse climatic and ecological terrains in the world. At its core, its biodiversity can largely be attributed to the Amazon, the world's largest tropical rainforest, and the Amazon river, the world's largest river. However, with this incredible wealth of ecology also comes great responsibility. In the past decade, roughly 80,000 square kilometers of the Brazilian Amazon were destroyed. And, as of late 2019, there were at least 1,000 threatened species in Brazil alone.

The concentration of people living in small areas has increased in the last decade, with more than half of the world's population living in cities. This is particularly true for Latin America, a region with no particular high contribution to the world total population, but hosts several large cities. The increase in urbanization causes several threats to wildlife that face the loss of their habitat and novel environmental pressures. As the number of wildlife entering cities seems to have increased in the last year, we characterize the temporal and geographical events of a widely distributed carnivore, the puma, Puma concolor. We performed an exhaustive search for media news regarding the sighting, capture, and/or killing of pumas within human settlement areas, and tried to relate them with potential explanatory variables. We found a total of 162 events in Latin America in a period of the last 10 years, particularly concentrated in the year 2020. Most records came from Brazil, followed by Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. Of the total, 41% were only sightings, 58% were captures, and a minor percentage were considered as mascotism. Almost the same number of records came from highly populated areas (cities) than from low populated areas (rural) but with important differences between countries. The countries with more records in urban areas (Brazil and Mexico) showed a larger surface occupied by cities. The countries with most records in rural areas (Argentina and Chile) present the opposite pattern of occupied surface. This might indicate that different percentages of areas dedicated to cities or urban spaces might explain the differences among countries. The most important variable related to puma events in the populated areas was sky brightness, while human density and cattle density explained minor parts. The “anthropause” due to the COVID-19 pandemic might explain the larger number of records from 2020, while the absence of high-quality habitats due to fragmentation and high cattle density, might force the pumas to enter populated areas searching for food. Minor values of night lights could be related to a facilitation of efficiency of foraging behavior. Although some bias might exist in the data, the results should be taken into account as general statements for all analyzed countries.

Santiago, Chile's capital and largest city, was considered the smartest city in Latin America in 2019. That year, the city achieved an overall score of 59.45 points. Buenos Aires, the capital city of Argentina, ranked second, with 54.71 score points. Meanwhile, the Dominican Republic's Santo Domingo was the highest ranking Caribbean city, with a 40.39 score.

The city of Bogotá, Colombia, ranked first as the Latin American metropolis most prone to traffic jams in 2021. According to the index, the Colombian capital experienced an average traffic increase of 55 percent during rush hours. Peru's capital, Lima, recorded the second worst congestion level that year, meaning that driving in the city took around 42 percent longer at peak time than under low traffic conditions. Out of the top 12 Latin American cities evaluated in 2021, seven are located in Brazil.

The Smart City Market Report is Segmented by Solution (Smart Mobility Management, Smart Public Safety, Smart Healthcare, Smart Building, Smart Utilities, Smart Security, Smart Education) and by Geography (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa). The Market Sizes and Forecasts are Provided in Terms of Value (USD) for all the Above Segments.

As of mid-2024, Montevideo ranked as the second Latin American and Caribbean metropolis with the highest cost of living index. The Uruguayan capital obtained an index score of 54.1, only second to Port of Spain, in Trinidad and Tobago, with 56.4 points. Monterrey and Panama City were the third and fourth most expensive cities to live in Latin America and the Caribbean that year, with scores surpassing 45 points each.

In 2022, approximately 11.45 million people lived in São Paulo, making it the largest municipality in Brazil and one of the most populous cities in the world. The homonymous state of São Paulo was also the most populous federal entity in the country.

Brazil's cities

Brazil is home to two large metropolises: São Paulo with close to 11.45 million inhabitants, and Rio de Janeiro with around 6.21 million inhabitants. It also contains a number of smaller, but well known cities such as Brasília, Salvador, Belo Horizonte and many others, which report between 2 and 3 million inhabitants each. As a result, the country's population is primarily urban, with nearly 85 percent of inhabitants living in cities.

While smaller than some of the other cities, Brasília was chosen to be the capital because of its relatively central location. The city is also well-known for its modernist architecture and utopian city plan which is quite controversial - criticized by many and praised by others.

Sports venues capitals

A number of Brazil’s medium-sized and large cities were chosen as venues for the 2014 World Cup, and the 2015 Summer Olympics also took place in Rio de Janeiro. Both of these events required large sums of money to support infrastructure and enhance mobility within a number of different cities across the country. Billions of dollars were spent on the 2014 World Cup, which went primarily to stadium construction and renovation, but also to a number of different mobility projects. Other short-term spending on infrastructure for the World Cup and the Rio Olympic Games was estimated at around 50 billion U.S. dollars. While these events have poured a lot of money into urban infrastructure, a number of social and economic problems within the country remain unsolved.

The highest city in the world with a population of more than one million is La Paz. The Capital of Bolivia sits 3,869 meters above sea level, and is more than 1,000 meters higher than the second ranked city - Quito. La Paz is also higher than Mt. Fuji in Japan, which has a height of 3,776 meters. Many of the world's highest cities are located in South America. The only city in North America that makes the top 20 list is Denver, Colorado, which has an altitude of 1,673 meters.

Port of Spain was the city with the highest restaurant prices in Latin America and the Caribbean as of mid-2024. The capital of Trinidad and Tobago scored 50.3 in the restaurant price index ranking that year.According to the calculation system used for the ranking, this means that people living in this city paid in restaurants around one third less than the inhabitants of New York City, the city used as the base for the index.

As of 2024, an estimate of 7.93 million people lived in Bogotá — the capital of Colombia and most populated city in the country. With 2.62 million, Medellín ranked second that year in the list of largest Colombian cities. Cali, located at the southwest of the country, followed closely behind with nearly 2.3 million inhabitants.

In 2023, the Mexican city of Colima was the most deadly city in the world, with a murder rate of 140.32 per 100,000 inhabitants. 7 out of the top 10 cities with over 250,000 habitants and the highest homicide rates were located in Mexico.

San Juan in Puerto Rico registered the highest price of meals for business travelers in Latin America in the last quarter of 2023, with a daily cost of 127 U.S. dollars. Mexico City was the second in the list at that time.

Santa María – a Peruvian city located to the west of the Andes mountain range – was the most polluted city in Latin America in 2024, based on fine air particulate matter concentration (PM2.5). That year, the city reported an average PM2.5 concentration of 53.4 micrograms per cubic meter. This was followed by Coyhaique, located in Chile, with an estimated PM2.5 concentration of around 40.5 μg/m³. Pollution in Latin American capitals The Chilean capital, Santiago, registered an average PM2.5 concentration of 21.3 μg/m³ in 2023. Lima, the Peruvian capital, had an estimated PM2.5 concentration of around 19.7 μg/m³, while in the capital of Mexico (Mexico City), air pollution amounted to 22.3 μg/m³. The World Health Organization's air quality standards recommend a maximum annual average concentration of 10 μg/m³. The burden of pollution on health Air particulate pollution has been associated with an increase in mortality from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, as well as development of lung cancer. This is specially concerning considering that nearly 2.8 billion people worldwide are exposed to hazardous levels of air pollution. In particular, South Asia was home to the countries with the highest exposure to hazardous concentrations of air pollution in 2022.

In 2022, Buenos Aires was the leading destination for the meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions (MICE) travel market in Latin America, surpassing the next city in the list by 28 events.

Cancún (Mexico) was the city with the largest international visitor spending in Latin America in 2018 with more than 5.3 billion U.S. dollars. It was followed by Punta Cana (Dominican Republic) with a total visitor spending of 4.45 billion dollars.

In 2018, Cancún (Mexico) was the Latin American city with the largest number of international visitors, receiving a total of 6.04 million tourists. It was followed by Punta Cana (Dominican Republic) with 3.89 million international tourists that year.