IBGE

Regional Division

Abstract
The surveys of the Regional Division of IBGE began in 1941 under the coordination of Prof. Fábio Macedo Soares Guimarães. The main purpose of his work was to systematically dispose the various "regional divisions" which have been proposed, in such a way that a unique Regional Division for Brazil could be organized to publish the Brazilian statistics. Following these works, the first Division of Brazil in regions, that is: North, Northeast, East, South and Central West was approved, on January, 31, 1942, through Circular number 1 of the Presidency of the Republic. Resolution 143 from July, 6, 1945, for the time, establishes the Division of Brazil in Physiographical Zones, based on economic criteria of municipalities grouping. These Physiographical Zones were used up to 1970 for the publishing of statistics produced by IBGE and Federative Units. On the sixties´, due to the changes happened in the national space, the surveys for the revision of Regional Division were taken again, in a macro level and Physiographical Zones.

Methodology
The intrinsic feature of the revision of Regional Division of Brazil is relative to the set of economical, social and political determinations which are related to the totality of organization of the national space, attested in Brazilian case by the unequal way as the development of the productive forces have been processed in their interactions with the natural setting. Considering the component parts of the referred totality, the Regional Division in macroregions from a historical and space perspective emphasizes an inter-regional division of production in the country, based on the internationalization of capital happened after 60, catching the initial point of this process in the way as the state sometimes tends to interfere, and, in other moments, to contract, due to the evolution of the process of accumulation and valorization of capital, which can be expressed in successive and varied Government Plans. The Regional Division of Brazil in mesoregions, from the the most general determinations in a conjuncture level, tried to identify individual areas in each one of the Federative Units, taken as universe of the analysis and defined the mesoregions based on the following dimensions: the social process as determinant, the natural setting as conditioning and the communication network and places as element of space articulation.

Application
Elaboration of public policies; to subsidize the system of decisions relative to the localization of economic, social and tributary activities; to subsidize the planning, surveys and identification of space structures of the Metropolitan Areas and other ways of urban and rural agglomerations.