Populace 

The most populous country in South America is Brazil with 209.5 million people. The second largest country is Colombia with a population of 49,661,048. Argentina is the third most populous country with 44,361,150. While Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia maintain the largest populations, large city populations are not restricted to those nations. The largest cities in South America, by far, are São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Lima, and Bogotá. These cities are the only cities on the continent to exceed eight million, and three of five in the Americas. Next in size are Caracas, Belo Horizonte, Medellin and Salvador.

 

 

Five of the top ten metropolitan areas are in Brazil. These metropolitan areas all have a population of above 4 million and include the São Paulo metropolitan area, Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area, and Belo Horizonte metropolitan area. Whilst the majority of the largest metropolitan areas are within Brazil, Argentina is host to the second largest metropolitan area by population in South America: the Buenos Aires metropolitan region is above 13 million inhabitants.

South America has also been witness to the growth of megapolitan areas. In Brazil four megaregions exist including the Expanded Metropolitan Complex of São Paulo with more than 32 million inhabitants. The others are the Greater Rio, Greater Belo Horizonte and Greater Porto Alegre. Colombia also has four megaregions which comprise 72% of its population, followed by Venezuela, Argentina and Peru which are also homes of megaregions.