Santos, São Paulo

Santos
	Santos
	— Municipality —
	The Municipality of; Estância Balneária de Santos
; Flag	; Seal
	Motto: Patriam Charitatem et Libertatem Docui; (Latin: To the homeland I taught charity and liberty)
	Location in the state of São Paulo and Brazil
	Coordinates: 23°58′S 46°20′W / 23.967°S 46.333°W
Country	Brazil
Region	Southeast
State	São Paulo
Settled	1546
Incorporated	1839
	Government
- Mayor	João Paulo Tavares Papa (PMDB)
	Area
- Municipality	280.3 km2 (108.2 sq mi)
- Metro	2,373 km2 (916.2 sq mi)
Elevation	2 m (7 ft)
	Population (2006)
- Municipality	418,375
- Density	1,494/km2 (3,866/sq mi)
- Metro	1,476,820
- Metro Density	622.3/km2 (1,611.9/sq mi)
Time zone	UTC-3 (UTC-3)
- Summer (DST)	UTC-2 (UTC-2)
Postal Code	11000-000
HDI (2000)	0.871 – high
Website	Santos, São Paulo

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This article is about the Brazilian city. For other uses of "Santos", see Santos (disambiguation).

Santos ( pronunciation (help·info)) is a municipality in the São Paulo state of Brazil, founded in 1546 by the Portuguese nobleman Brás Cubas. It is partially located on the island of São Vicente which harbors both the city of Santos and the city of São Vicente, and partially on the mainland. It is the main city in the metropolitan region of Baixada Santista. As of 2006^[update], its population was estimated at 418,375 (1,476,820 metro area). Santos has the biggest seaport in Latin America, which traded over 72 million tons in 2006; is a significant tourist centre; has large industrial complexes and shipping centres, which handle a large portion of the world's coffee exports; as well as a number of other Brazilian exports including steel, oil, cars, oranges, bananas and cotton. The city is also home to the Coffee Museum, where, once, coffee prices were negotiated; and a football memorial, dedicated to the city's greatest players, amongst which is Pelé. Its beach's garden, 5.335 km length, figures in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest beach front garden. Santos is home for the famous football club Santos FC, where Pelé has played.

The exportation of coffee from the Port of Santos gave rise to and greatly increased the modernity of the city. Adorning the landscape of the port city are the canals with over a hundred years of antiquity. In 1899, Santos was the point of entry for the bubonic plague into Brazil.^[2] In 1924, it became the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Santos.

In October 2006, light crude oil was discovered off the coast in the Santos basin.^[3]

Santos is about 79 km (49 mi) from the metropolis São Paulo, capital of the state São Paulo.

[edit] Geography

[edit] Physical and environmental aspects

It is divided into two distinct geographic areas: the islands and the continental area. Both areas differ both in terms of population, as in economic terms and geography.

[edit] Island area

It lies on the island of São Vicente (Saint Vincent), whose territory is divided with the neighboring municipality of São Vicente. With an area of 39.4 km ², densely urbanized, houses almost all the inhabitants of the city. It includes a flat area - Plain Litorânea extension of the State of São Paulo - which presents altitudes that rarely go beyond the twenty meters above sea level, and an area composed of isolated hills called Mass of São Vicente, the former home and endowed an urban illegal occupation with a mix of fabrics characterized by high and low incomes, whose height does not exceed 200 meters above sea level.

About the flat region of the island of St. Vincent has almost no vegetation, because of the high process of sealing of urban land. In the region north of the island, in the neighborhoods of Alemoa, the Chico de Paula and Saboó there are still remnants of mangroves. Before the occupation of the area of the island by plane chácaras (and subsequently by urbanization), there were a vast flooded land covered by mangroves, the Atlantic forest and vegetation near the beach.

We can still find in the hills, vast areas covered by the native Atlantic Forest, despite existing chácaras and banana harvesting farms in the area. The Lagoa da Saudade, located in Morro Nova Cintra, low altitude, is known to harbor a kind of alligator. The disordered occupation represents both an environmental risk as geological: the deforestation leads to frequent landslides of land, mainly from January to March, the traditional rainy season in the region.

Most rivers in the island were channelled when engineer Saturnino de Brito designed the system of channels in the city. As examples, we can cite the rivers "Two Rivers" and "Ribeirao of Soldiers" (current channel of av. Campos Salles). However, some major water courses have cut the island in the north, such as the St. George River, which suffers from the problems of pollution and silting due to the occupation of its banks by slums.

Climate chart for Santos

J

F

M

A

M

J

A

S

O

N

D

284

34

22

240

34

22

277

31

22

177

32

18

151

29

16

112

28

14

106

28

13

93

30

15

137

30

17

178

32

18

162

33

19

226

33

21

average temperatures in °C
precipitation totals in mm

Imperial conversion

J	F	M	A	M	J	J	A	S	O	N	D
11 93 72	9.4 93 72	11 88 72	7 90 64	5.9 84 61	4.4 82 57	4.2 82 55	3.7 86 59	5.4 86 63	7 90 64	6.4 91 66	8.9 91 70
average temperatures in °F precipitation totals in inches