We have released a new white paper, Verticalização: Tall Buildings Beyond the Metropolis, developed through our 2026 Cities for People Premier Program Partnership with Talls Solutions, a company of the FG Group.
For decades, Brazil’s tallest buildings were a story about its largest metropolitan areas. That assumption held for 47 years, from São Paulo’s Palácio W. Zarzur reaching 170 meters in 1967 to 2014, when Balneário Camboriú began setting Brazil’s new height records. This new research delivers actionable insight into one of Brazilian urbanism’s most consequential shifts: verticalização, the intensification of urban land use through high-rise construction, and what happens when that process begins to move away from larger to smaller cities.
Beyond the high-level generalities, though, the paper traces how that shift has played out on the ground, from displaced urban fabric in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro to Balneário Camboriú itself, now home to seven of Brazil’s 10 tallest buildings, several exceeding 250 meters, with more planned to surpass 500. It examines what this concentration reveals about the urban planning tools shaping, or failing to shape, Brazil’s vertical growth.
We invite you to read and share these findings with your teams and network.