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Carolina Faccin
Carolina Faccin
  1. Projects/

Territorial Division of Labor & Urban Network

Regional Development
Table of Contents
How do the location decisions of multinational companies shape the network of cities in a region, and can we see it in the data?
Period
2019–2020
Location
Vales Region (Rio Pardo Valley and Taquari Valley), Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Partners
PROPUR/UFRGS (Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning)
My role
Independent master’s research: data collection, database, statistical and spatial analysis, cartography (more than 30 maps) and writing.
Data
Company registry (Receita Federal CNPJ, 2020) · MAPA establishment registry (2020) · RAIS and CAGED (2018) · COMEX STAT exports (2018) · IBGE (2010–2018) · SES-RS (2020)
Tools & methods
QGIS · Excel · Adobe Illustrator · Flow mapping · Documentary research

The challenge
#

The Vales Region is home to two of Brazil’s most globalized agro-industrial chains: tobacco in the Rio Pardo Valley and poultry in the Taquari Valley. Both are dominated by multinational companies, yet the two sub-regions developed very different urban networks. The research asked whether the organization of each production chain explains that difference.

Approach
#

I mapped every establishment of the two chains and connected them to employment, export and corporate headquarters data, producing more than 30 original maps.

Linking supply chains to urban networks
  1. Firms

    Locate establishments from company and agriculture-ministry registries

  2. Jobs & trade

    Employment (RAIS, CAGED) and exports (COMEX STAT) by municipality

  3. Flows

    Capital, information and export flows from global HQs to local plants and ports

  4. Comparison

    Rio Pardo Valley vs. Taquari Valley urban networks

Results
#

  • The tobacco chain is highly centralized: processing plants of multinational companies concentrate in Santa Cruz do Sul and Venâncio Aires, producing a monocentric, simpler urban network in the Rio Pardo Valley. Employment is also strongly seasonal, with hiring peaks in February–March and layoffs in August–September.
  • The poultry chain is spread across many municipalities, with slaughterhouses and feed factories distributed through the Taquari Valley, producing a polycentric network with denser interactions between cities.
  • The urban network is both a reflection of and a condition for the territorial division of labor.

Why it matters
#

The findings show that regional development policies cannot treat neighboring regions as the same: the structure of the dominant economic activity shapes where jobs, services and infrastructure are needed.

Maps
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Composite map linking global headquarters of tobacco companies in Europe and the United States to their Brazilian offices and to processing plants in the Vales Region, over municipalities shaded by tobacco production
Tobacco chain: from global headquarters to processing plants in the Rio Pardo Valley.
Composite map linking poultry companies' headquarters and international markets to slaughterhouses and feed factories spread across the Taquari Valley, over municipalities shaded by poultry flock size
Poultry chain: distributed plants across the Taquari Valley.
Map of the Vales Region with pie charts per municipality showing total exports by sector in 2018, dominated by large green circles for tobacco in Santa Cruz do Sul and Venâncio Aires
Exports by municipality and sector (2018).
Maps and line chart of tobacco processing jobs in Santa Cruz do Sul, Venâncio Aires and Vera Cruz, showing hiring peaking in March and layoffs peaking in September 2019
Tobacco processing jobs and their seasonality (RAIS/CAGED).
Maps of tobacco exports by municipality in the Vales Region and export flows from the port of Rio Grande to destinations worldwide
Tobacco exports and destinations.
Maps of poultry and pork exports by municipality and world maps of export destinations for chicken meat, meat meal and pork
Poultry and pork exports and destinations.
Maps and line charts of jobs in poultry slaughter and meat products in Taquari Valley municipalities, with relatively stable hiring and layoffs through the year
Poultry slaughter and meat-product jobs.
Map of the Vales Region shaded by year of municipal emancipation with a genealogical tree of lines showing which municipality each new one split from
Genealogy of municipal emancipations in the region.