City time series
São Paulo's urban expansion: 1975–2025, built-up area 1.4×
- Brazil
- GHSL epochs 1975–2025
At a glance
- São Paulo's built-up area grew from about 473 km² in 1975 to 646 km² in 2025 — 1.4× the 1975 footprint, or +0.6% per year compounded.
- Over the same window the urban centre's population 1.8×, reaching about 19.5M by 2025.
- The current footprint of 646 km² is equivalent to about 189 Central Parks.
Key growth numbers
- Built-up area 1.4× +0.6% per year since 1975
- Population 1.8× about 19.5M in 2025
- GHSL epochs 11 five-year steps, no interpolation
São Paulo: population and built-up area, epoch by epoch
São Paulo
Data table
| Epoch | Population | Built-up km² |
|---|---|---|
| 1975 | 11M | 473 km² |
| 1980 | 13.5M | 483 km² |
| 1985 | 14.6M | 494 km² |
| 1990 | 15.7M | 504 km² |
| 1995 | 16.5M | 543 km² |
| 2000 | 17.1M | 585 km² |
| 2005 | 17.9M | 600 km² |
| 2010 | 18.6M | 617 km² |
| 2015 | 19.2M | 632 km² |
| 2020 | 19.4M | 640 km² |
| 2025 | 19.5M | 646 km² |
Method & data
All numbers come from the GHS Urban Centre Database (GHSL): the European Commission's Joint Research Centre publishes, for every urban centre on Earth, the total built-up area and resident population on five-year epochs from 1975 to 2025.
An epoch is a full mapping pass, not an estimate for that calendar year; a metric the source does not report for an epoch is shown as missing — values are never interpolated or extrapolated between epochs.
The numbers stay inside the GHSL Urban Centre boundary — a stable, data-derived footprint of the contiguous built-up core, not an administrative city limit; figures are therefore not comparable to city-proper census counts.
A night-lights curve (VIIRS) is planned as a second series and is not part of this page yet; the epoch table above is the complete published dataset for this city.
Frequently asked questions
How much has São Paulo grown between 1975 and 2025?
São Paulo's built-up area expanded 1.4× — from roughly 473 km² to 646 km² inside the GHSL urban-centre boundary.
How many people live in São Paulo as of 2025?
The GHSL epoch for 2025 reports about 19.5M people inside São Paulo's urban centre.
Where do these numbers come from?
From the GHS Urban Centre Database (GHSL), published free and openly by the European Commission — see the method section above for the epoch semantics.
Related pages
Brazil country profile: key metrics vs world median →
Other cities
Data & method
GHS Urban Centre Database R2024A, European Commission Joint Research Centre (CC BY 4.0); built-up area and population per five-year epoch, consumed unmodified from the tabular release.
City outline: the GHSL urban-centre boundary, simplified for display — illustrative, not a navigable boundary.