Recife, Pernambuco, Northeast Region, Brazil

Economy | Information technology industry | Logistics hub | Shopping centers | Medical facilities | Convention centers

🇧🇷 Recife is the fourth-largest urban area in Brazil and the capital and largest city of the state of Pernambuco in the north-east corner of South America. The first slave port in the Americas, Recife was founded in 1537, during the early Portuguese colonisation of Brazil, as the main harbour of the Captaincy of Pernambuco, known for its large scale production of sugar cane.

The city is located at the confluence of the Beberibe and Capibaribe rivers before they flow into the South Atlantic Ocean. It is a major port on the Atlantic. Its name is an allusion to the stone reefs that are present by the city's shores. The many rivers, small islands and over 50 bridges found in Recife city centre characterise its geography and led to the city being called the "Brazilian Venice". As of 2010, it is the capital city with the highest Human Development Index in Northeast Brazil.

The Metropolitan Region of Recife is the main industrial zone of the State of Pernambuco; major products are those derived from cane (sugar and ethanol), motor vehicles, ships, oil platforms, electronics, software, and others. With fiscal incentives by the government, many industrial companies were started in the 1970s and 1980s. Recife has a tradition of being the most important commercial hub of the North/North-eastern region of Brazil, with more than 52,500 business enterprises in Recife plus 32,500 in the Metro Area, totalling more than 85,000.

Recife is Brazil's second largest medical hub; modern hospitals with state-of-the-art equipment receive patients from several neighbouring States.

Recife stands out as a major tourist attraction of the Northeast, both for its beaches and for its historic sites, dating back to both the Portuguese and the Dutch colonisation of the region. The Historic Centre of Olinda, is a UNESCO World Heritage site and the cities' Brazilian Carnivals are among the world's most famous.

The city is an education hub, and home to the Federal University of Pernambuco, the largest university in Pernambuco.

Economy According to 2013 IBGE statistics, the GDP was at R$46,445,339,000. And the GDP per capita was at R$29,037.

Recife is one of Brazil's prime business centres, largely because it has one international airport and two international seaports. One is located in the town itself, and the other, the port of Suape, is located about 40 km (25 mi) away. Just south of Recife is the region's main industrial area, where the following industries can be found: shipbuilding, automotive, petroleum refining, petrochemical, electronics, tube manufacturing, brewing and canning, chocolate manufacturing, textiles, etc.

Recife has shared in the prosperity of Northeastern Brazil that resulted from development promoted after 1960 by Sudene (Superintendência para o Desenvolvimento do Nordeste), a federal agency / organization. Although its retail and wholesale trade have grown in response to the region's increases in population and wealth, the market area and the walkways of the city's bridges are crowded with informal traders selling small items.

Information technology industry Recife has an area dedicated to information technology called "Porto Digital" (Digital Port) with more than 90 companies and 3,000 high tech Jobs. It was founded in July 2000 and has since attracted major investments. Generating some R$10 billion (Brazilian Reais) a year, it produces technology that is exported to the United States, India, Japan, and China, among other countries. Software manufacturing is the main activity in the Porto Digital. The Porto Digital cluster comprises small and medium companies, but multinationals from across the world, like Accenture, Motorola, Samsung, Dell and Sun Microsystems also have operations there. IBM and Microsoft transferred their regional headquarters to Recife. Porto Digital's startups can count on a ready pool of talent, courtesy of the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), which boasts one of the best computer-science departments in all of Latin America. The university began teaching programmers to use Sun Microsystems Inc.'s (SUNW) Java language in 1996, the year it was introduced. Professors at the school also teamed up to launch the Centro de Estudos e Sistemas Avançados do Recife (C.E.S.A.R), a business incubator that has played a vital role in the birth of some 30 companies.

Logistics hub Due to its ports, airport, and geographic location in the north-eastern region of Brazil, Recife is considered one of the biggest logistics hubs in Brazil. The Logistics and Communications sector employs 4% of the people in Recife, 12.3% in Jaboatão dos Guararapes and over 9% in the Metropolitan Area. These numbers were due to increase with the conclusion of the Transnordestina (the main NE Trainline) with a 1,800/1,118 km/mi extension, which will cross 3 and connect 7 States (34 municipalities in Pernambuco alone) products with Suape port (PE) and Pecem Port (CE) with costs that are estimated to be around 4.5 R$.

Recife has historically benefited from its central location in the Northeast region. In a 200-mile (320 km) radius from Recife are four state capitals, two international and three regional airports, five international ports, 12 million people, 51% of the research centres of the Northeast and 35% of the region's GDP. Similarly, in a 500-mile (800 km) radius there are seven state capitals, five international and five regional airports, nine international seaports and two fluvial ports.

Shopping centers Shopping Center Recife was inaugurated in 1980 and it was subsequently surpassed by Riomar Mall, which gross leasable area is 101.000 m², compared with 91.200m² of Shopping Recife. Other shopping centres include: • Shopping Center Tacaruna. The first centre for purchases in the North/West zone of the Recife Metropolitan Region was inaugurated on April 29, 1997, with the intention of improving the economies of the cities of Recife, Olinda, and Paulista. • Shopping Paço da Alfândega • Plaza Shopping Casa Forte, which was inaugurated in November 1998. • Shopping RioMar, which was inaugurated in 2012.

Medical facilities The Metropolitan Region of Recife has the third largest medical pool in Brazil, after São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Together they make up 417 hospitals and clinics with 72,000 employees in the Metro Area and more than 120,000 in the State of Pernambuco. The medical pool offers a total of 8,990 beds and, according to the Union of the Hospitals of Pernambuco, recorded in the year 2000 an invoicing of R$220 million (Brazilian Reals). It is thanks to the pool that Pernambuco has access to more CT scan devices than more developed countries such as Canada or France.

A large portion of the modern hospitals included in the pool are located between the neighbourhoods of Derby and of the Ilha do Leite. The Hospital Real Português de Beneficência Portuguesa em Pernambuco, or "Hospital Português" (Portuguese Hospital) for short, is one of the most renowned hospitals in the country. Many people from neighbouring states go to Recife for treatment, as it has the largest and best medical facilities in the North–Northeast of Brazil. Recife has three universities / medical schools for medicine, two public, Federal University of Pernambuco and University of Pernambuco; and one private, Escola Pernambucana de Medicina FBV/IMIP (Medical School of Pernambuco).

Convention centers Many events taking place during the year include: • O Virtuosi, Festival International de Musica de Pernambuco (International Music Festival); • O Mimo, Mostra International de Musica em Olinda (International Music Show in Olinda); • A feira da Musica Brasil/Porto Musical (Brazil Music Port); • A Fispal Recife, Feira Internacional da Alimentacao (International Food Festival); • Recife and Olinda Carnival.

Because of its geographic location, tourism and city infrastructure, Recife's convention centres are of a high standard. The two centres are: • Centro de Convenções de Pernambuco (Pernambuco Convention Center) The third largest convention centre in Brazil. • Centro de Convenções da UFPE (Federal University of Pernambuco Convention Center) A modern theatre with 1,931 seats and 2,071 square metres (22,290 square feet) of exposition area located on the university campus.

Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil 
Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil
Image: Photo by Denys Barabanov on Unsplash

Recife is rated Sufficiency by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) which evaluates and ranks the relationships between world cities in the context of globalisation. Sufficiency level cities are cities that have a sufficient degree of services so as not to be overly dependent on world cities.

Recife was ranked #370 by the Nomad List which evaluates and ranks remote work hubs by cost, internet, fun and safety. Recife has a population of over 1,653,000 people. Recife also forms the centre of the wider Recife Metropolitan Region which has a population of over 4,078,000 people. Recife is ranked #461 for startups with a score of 0.423.

To set up a UBI Lab for Recife see: https://www.ubilabnetwork.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/UBILabNetwork

Twin Towns, Sister Cities Recife has links with:

🇵🇹 Barcelos, Portugal 🇨🇴 Medellín, Colombia 🇨🇳 Nansha District, China 🇫🇷 Nantes, France 🇵🇹 Oliveira de Azeméis, Portugal 🇵🇹 Porto, Portugal 🇱🇧 Zahlé, Lebanon
Text Atribution: Wikipedia Text under CC-BY-SA license | GaWC | Nomad | StartupBlink

Antipodal to Recife is: 145.128,8.054

Locations Near: Recife -34.8719,-8.05412

🇧🇷 Olinda -34.855,-7.991 d: 7.2  

🇧🇷 Paulista -34.867,-7.933 d: 13.4  

🇧🇷 Camaragibe -34.986,-7.994 d: 14.3  

🇧🇷 Abreu e Lima -34.904,-7.91 d: 16.4  

🇧🇷 São Lourenço da Mata -35.017,-8 d: 17  

🇧🇷 Jaboatão dos Guararapes -35.016,-8.112 d: 17.1  

🇧🇷 Igarassu -34.908,-7.839 d: 24.2  

🇧🇷 Cabo de Santo Agostinho -35.028,-8.288 d: 31.2  

🇧🇷 Vitória de Santo Antão -35.292,-8.116 d: 46.8  

🇧🇷 Carpina -35.255,-7.846 d: 48.1  

Antipodal to: Recife 145.128,8.054

🇬🇺 Hagåtña 144.746,13.467 d: 19411.8  

🇬🇺 Tamuning 144.767,13.483 d: 19410.1  

🇬🇺 Dededo 144.836,13.515 d: 19407  

🇲🇵 Saipan 145.753,15.189 d: 19218.8  

🇵🇼 Ngerulmud 134.627,7.487 d: 18856.5  

🇮🇩 Jayapura 140.72,-2.529 d: 18740.8  

🇫🇲 Palikir 158.15,6.917 d: 18574  

🇫🇲 Kolonia 158.212,6.952 d: 18567.6  

🇵🇬 Mount Hagen 144.22,-5.865 d: 18464.1  

🇮🇩 Manokwari 134.083,-0.867 d: 18439.2  

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