Campinas

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Template:Redlinks {{infobox City 

 |official_name=Campinas, SP, Brazil
 |image_seal=Campinas-flag.gif
 |subdivision_type   = Country
  State
 |subdivision_name   = Brazil
  São Paulo
 |area_total= 797.6
 |area_magnitude = 1 E9
 |population_total = 969,396
 |population_metro = 953,218
 |population_density = 1213.5

}}

Campinas is a city and county (município) located in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. It is geographically close to Valinhos.

The county area is 797 km². Population is approximately 1,017,000 (2004 est.), with over 98% in the urban region. Its metropolitan area, defined in 2000, has some 19 cities and a population of 2.3 million people. Campinas is also the administrative center of the meso-region of the same name, with 3.27 million inhabitants and 43 cities. It is the third largest city in the state, after São Paulo (approx. 10,900,000) and Guarulhos (approx. 1,160,000).

The City Hall's location is Template:Coor dms (ca. 60 km north of the Tropic of Capricorn, with an altitude of 730 m. Postal code (CEP) is 13100-000.

Address of the Local Government is: Prefeitura Municipal de Campinas, Avenida Anchieta, 200, Centro, Campinas, SP, Brazil 13015-904. Image:Brazil-Campinas-map.jpg

Contents

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History

The city was founded on July 14, 1774, by Barreto Leme. It was initially a simple outpost on the way to Minas Gerais and Goiás serving the "Bandeirantes" who were in search of precious minerals and Indian slaves. In the first half of the 19th century, Campinas became a growing population center, with many coffee and sugarcane farms. The construction of a railway linking it to the city of São Paulo and Santos' seaport, in 1817, was very important for its growth. In the second half of the 19th century, with the abolition of slavery, farming and industrialization attracted many foreign immigrants to replace the lost manpower, mainly from Italy. Coffee became an important export and the city became wealthy. In consequence, a large service sector was established to serve the growing population, and in the first decades of the 20th century, Campinas could already boast as having an opera house, theaters, banks, movie theaters, radio stations, a philarmonic band, two newspapers, (Correio Popular) and Diário do Povo, a good public education system (with the Escola Normal de Campinas and the Colégio Culto à Ciência), and hospitals, such as the Santa Casa de Misericórdia (a charity for poor people) and the Casa de Saúde de Campinas (for the Italian community), and the most important Brazilian research center in agricultural sciences, the Instituto Agronômico de Campinas, which was founded by Emperor Pedro II. Finally, the construction of the first Brazilian highway in 1938, between Campinas and São Paulo, the Anhanguera Highway, was a turning point in the integration of Campinas into the rest of the state.

Campinas was the birthplace of opera composer Carlos Gomes (1836—1896) and of the President of the Republic Campos Salles (1841—1913). It was home for 49 years for Hércules Florence, reputed as one of the early inventors of photography, photocopying and the mimeograph.

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Title and symbols

Campinas means grass fields in Portuguese and refers to its characteristic landscape, which originally comprised large stretches of dense subtropical forests (mato grosso or thick woods in Portuguese), mainly along the many rivers, interspersed with gently rolling hills covered by low-lying vegetation.

Campinas is also known as "Cidade das Andorinhas" (City of the Swallows), because it was a favorite spot for these migratory birds, which flocked annually in enormous numbers to downtown Campinas. However, they almost disappeared around the 1950s, probably because the church and plaza where they used to roost were torn down. Image:Campinas-flag.gif Campinas' official crest and flag has a picture of the mythical bird, the phoenix, because it was practically reborn after a devastating epidemic of yellow fever in the 1800s, which killed more than 25% of the city's inhabitants.

An inhabitant of Campinas is called a campineiro or campinense.

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City twinning

Campinas is officially twinned with 11 cities:

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Metropolitan Region of Campinas

Image:Microregion-campinas.jpg As of 2000, Campinas became an official metropolitan region (RMC — Região Metropolitana de Campinas), with 19 municipalities, with a total of 2.3 million inhabitants and a total land area of 3,348 km2 (data of 2000), adjacent to the São Paulo metropolitan region (RMSP).

The Campinas municipality is also the administrative center of the micro- and meso-regions of the same name. The micro-region includes the RMC (Metropolitan Region of Campinas) and the municipality of Elias Fausto; the meso-region also includes the following municipalities: Aguaí, Amparo, Águas da Prata, Águas de Lindóia, Caconde, Casa Branca, Divinolândia, Espírito Santo do Pinhal, Estiva Gerbi, Itapira, Itobi, Lindóia, Mococa, Mogi Guaçu, Moji-Mirim, Monte Alegre do Sul, Pedra Bela, Pinhalzinho, Pirassununga, Porto Ferreira, Santa Cruz das Palmeiras, Santo Antônio do Jardim, São João da Boa Vista, São José do Rio Pardo, São Sebastião da Grama, Serra Negra, Socorro, Tambaú, Tapiratiba, Vargem Grande do Sul and Vinhedo.

Other cities which are geographically, historically or economically tied to the meso-region of Campinas could be mentioned: Louveira, Morungaba, Tuiuti, Atibaia, Bragança Paulista, Itupeva, Jundiai, Rafard, Salto, Itu, Mombuca, Rio das Pedras, Iracemápolis, Limeira, Capivari, Jarinu, Conchal, Araras and Piracicaba.

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Economy

Image:Jockey Club Centro Campinas IMG 7034.jpg Campinas' main economic activities are agriculture (mainly coffee, sugarcane, and cotton), industry (textiles, motorcycles, cars, machinery, agricultural equipment, chemical and petrochemical, pharmaceuticals, paper and cellulose, telecommunications, computers and electronics, etc.), commerce and services.

The region is an economic powerhouse, responsible for 9% of Brazil's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with just over 3% of the country's population. Per capita income is one of the highest in Latin America (over US$ 9,000/year Purchase Parity Power). Absolute GDP has experienced a growth of more than 50%¨between 2000 and 2003. Five cities in Campinas' region are among the 100 largest in GDPs in Brazil (Campinas, Paulínia, Americana, Sumaré and Indaiatuba), with Campinas occupying the 14th position (total GDP of US$ 6 billion).

Campinas has been dubbed the Brazilian Silicon Valley, since it is home to many national and multinational high-tech industries (IBM, Motorola, Freescale, Lucent, Nortel, Compaq, Celestica, Samsung, Alcatel, Bosch, 3M, Texas Instruments, General Motors, Honda, Magneti-Marelli and many others), as well as to several research centers and universities (such as LNLS, CPqD, CenPRA, EMBRAPA, UNICAMP, and PUCCAMP). It also has a sizable pharmaceutical industry sector, with companies like Medley Farma, Sigma Pharma, Altana, Merck, etc.

The region also boasts being the Brazilian city with the largest number of high-tech business incubators and industrial parks (in a total of eight), such as the CIATEC I and II, Softex, TechnoPark, InCamp, Polis, TechTown, Industrial Park of Campinas and others.

According to Wired Magazine, Campinas is one of the highest-growth high-tech areas in Latin America, second only to the city of São Paulo itself. Since 1995, the city has received over US$ 7 billion in investments in telecommunications, information technology and electronics. Of the 500 largest companies listed by Fortune magazine, 50 are already established in the Campinas region.

The presence of one of the largest oil refineries in Latin America (350,824 barrels of crude per day), operated by Petrobras in the neighboring county of Paulínia, has attracted many petrochemical industries to the Campinas area, including DuPont, Rhone-Poulenc, and Royal Dutch Shell.

Several key technologies in which Brazil achieved leadership at international level were developed in and around Campinas. For example, the unique and highly-successful Brazilian Pró-Álcool Program (development of a whole industry around the use of ethanol as a combustible for motor vehicles, going from a new sucrose-rich sugarcane, to alcohol refineries, a huge distribution system, as well as a new engine), etc.; and, more recently, a combustion engine capable of using either gasoline or ethanol.

Other examples of Campinas-bred technologies were fiber optics, lasers for telecommunications and medicine applications, integrated circuits design and fabrication, satellite environmental monitoring of natural resources, software for agriculture, digital telephone switches, deep-water oil exploration platforms and technologies, biomedical equipment, medical software, genetic engineering and recombinant DNA technologies for food production and pharmaceutics, food engineering, and many others.

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Socio-economic conditions

Despite Campinas' position of wealth and social and economic opportunity vis-a-vis the rest of the country, the average per capita income of little more than US$ 2,700 per year clearly indicates that there are problems. If re-evaluated in terms of PPP (Purchasing Power Parity), Campinas' average income looks better (roughly 9,000 USD per year). In fact, Campinas is emblematic of the wealth distribution inequality that is so common in the country (Brazil is the 14th largest economy in the world, but ranks only 32th in wealth generation per capita, and 117th in average Gini coefficient). Campinas has a Gini coefficient of 58%, which is almost the same as that of Brazil (59.3), a level similar to countries such as Zimbabwe and Paraguay. Such a level means that the top 10% richest make almost 70 times more than the 10% poorest.

This level of poverty contrasts with the high Human Development Index of Campinas, which is about the same level as Chile, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania and Slovakia. The explanation for this apparent contradiction is that side by side, even in the same city section, one can find walled condominiums with a yearly average per capita income of US$ 60,000 to US$ 100,000 and spreading "favelas" (slum cities) with incomes of less than US$ 800 p.a. The relatively small classes A and B move the local economy, and provide a strong tax base for the municipality.

Until the late 1970s, Campinas was proud to have no favelas, but the increasing industrialization and wealth attracted hordes of destitute agrarian workers and urban dwellers with few job qualifications from all parts of the country. Land invasions were frequent and the municipal powers were unable or unwilling to repress them, allowing illegal occupation of land in key sectors of the city (in Brazil, state and counties are forbidden by the Federal Constitution to restrict or even measure the free movement of citizens).

Due to all this, Campinas has relatively high crime rates for its size. Most of the violent crimes (armed robbery and homicides) are related to drug trafficking and occur in the poorer sections of the city.

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Transportation

Image:Anel-Viario-Campinas.jpg Image:Dom-pedro-km145.jpg Campinas is a major transportation and telecommunications hub for the State of São Paulo, as it is located on the major highways that connect the capital to the Northwest and Northern parts of the State. The city is served by the a Campinas Beltway (Anel Viário) and the following main highways:

All these highways are very modern and constructed according to the highest international standards (see highway system of São Paulo). The Anel Viário José Magalhães Teixeira (SP-038) around the city currently interconnects the Anhangüera and Dom Pedro I highways.

Campinas has long been a major railway hub, too, although passenger train lines no longer operate there.

Its international airport, Viracopos Airport, has long been the State's main air cargo terminal, and its passenger traffic is rapidly expanding.

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Communications

Campinas is a major telecommunications hub in the state and in the country. It has the largest per capita number of fixed and mobile telephone lines in the state and one of the largest in the country. The city is also a major hub for cable, fiber optic, microwave and satellite communication networks. COMSAT operates near Campinas one of the largest satellite ground stations in Latin America, and the National Research and Education Network (Rede Nacional de Pesquisa e Educação) has a high-capacity point of presence (POP) in the city.

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Media

Two daily newspapers, which are among Brazil's most modern ones, are published in Campinas, both owned by media company Rede Anhangüera de Comunicações: Correio Popular and Diário do Povo. Several other local newspapers with weekly or monthly circulation are also published. Several magazines are also published in Campinas, the largest one being Metrópole, which circulates on Sundays as a supplement to Correio Popular.

The city has also a large number of radio stations as well as several local TV stations, including TV Universidades and Fenix TV (both not-for-profit, distributed by Net Campinas, the local cable distributor)

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Ecology

Image:Ipês lilás na coronel quirino cambuí 002.jpg Campinas has a relevant ecological interest area (Portuguese: Área de Relevante Interesse Ecológico — Santa Genebra forest, with 2.51 km², created in 1985 and regulated by IBAMA, Campinas City Hall and José Pedro de Oliveira Foundation.

Campinas has always been a very "green" town, with many beautiful trees in the streets and public parks. Among the verdant public parks, there are the "Bosque Municipal", the "Lagoa do Taquaral Park", the "Ecological Park of Campinas" and the "Lagoa da UNICAMP" Park. Jogging and bicycle paths were built in these parks and are used by the population.

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Climate

Campinas is located on the São Paulo plateau, in the transition area to the Serra da Mantiqueira mountain range. It has an excellent climate throughout the year, characterized by mostly sunny days (more than 200 days in the year), a mild temperature range (average yearly temperature of 22.4 degrees Celsius, ranging from an average minimum of 12.2 degrees to a maximum of 29.9 degrees) and a constant regime of cool winds. Due to this, Campinas has little air pollution and smog and the local airport almost never closes due to bad weather. Thanks to a regular rain regimen, the region's vegetation is evergreen, and some crops, such as sugarcane have three harvests per year!

The wet season is from mid-October to mid-June, with heavier rains particularly in January and February, and the dry season is from mid-June to mid-October. Average rainfall is 24.3 mm in August and 267.8 mm in January. Average humidity ranges from 37% (August) to 56% (January).

In the region around Campinas near the state of Minas Gerais there are a number of cities enjoying an even milder mountain climate, such as Serra Negra, Águas de Lindóia, Socorro, Itapira, Itatiba, Atibaia, Joanópolis, where several water spas are located.

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Education and health

Campinas has strong educational and health care institutions which attract students and patients from all over Latin America. Besides a state university, UNICAMP, Campinas boasts a student population of over 60,000, with many private universities having campuses in the city. Several of its hospitals and specialized clinics are among the best in Brazil, such as the huge State University of Campinas Clinics Hospital, Instituto Penido Burnier, Centro Infantil Domingos Boldrini and many others.

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Universities and colleges

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Technical schools

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Culture

Image:Estação ferroviária - centro cultural de Campinas 001.jpg Image:Igreja Nossa Senhora da Conceição no centro de Campinas 002.jpg The city has always been a cultural center in the State of São Paulo. This has increased greatly with the proliferation of universities. Campinas has three theater houses, a symphony orchestra (considered one of the three best of the country), classical music ensembles, choral groups, 43 movie theaters, dozens of libraries (including a municipal library), art galleries, museums, etc. Cultural life is varied and intense, particularly in popular music.

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Sports

Campinas is the home town for two of the oldest and most significant soccer teams of Brazil, the Associação Atlética Ponte Preta (one of the oldest football teams in Brazil, having been founded in 1900) and Guarani Futebol Clube (the only Brazilian interior team to have won the national championship, in 1978). They own two magnificent stadiums, the Estádio Brinco de Ouro and the Estádio Moisés Lucarelli.

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Resources for foreigners

Due to the high concentration of multinational and foreign-controlled companies, Campinas has developed a unique and resourceful structure to welcome and to serve executives and workers from other countries who reside in the city. There are two primary/secondary schools that teach in English or German and follow the Northern hemisphere school calendar, the American School of Campinas and the Colégio Visconde do Rio Branco (German). Campinas is also the seat of a branch of the American Chamber of Commerce. A number of high-level walled housing condominiums such as Gramado, Alphaville, and others, provide world-class comfort and security at reasonable prices. Hotel and restaurant infrastructure is excellent and plentiful, with many international chains operating in the city, such as Accor and Meliá. A Convention and Visitors Bureau exists in the city and is very helpful. A large international-class convention center is available at the Royal Palm Hotel, and videoconferencing facilities for rental are available at the Campinas Videoconference Center (at Edumed Institute).

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Administration

Image:Centro de Campinas - prefeitura municipal - Palácio dos Jequitibás 001.jpg Campinas has an annual municipal budget of over US$ 300 million dollars, one of the highest in Brazil. The current mayor is Hélio de Oliveira Santos, a physician, former professor of pediatric surgery at the UNICAMP Medical School and federal congressman, who was elected by a coalition of several political parties, led by the Partido Democrático Trabalhista. His term runs from Jan. 1, 2005 to Dec. 31, 2008.

The municipality is subdivided into one main district and four subdistricts, Joaquim Egídio, Sousas, Barão Geraldo and Nova Aparecida. There are also 14 regional administrations.

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External links

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