Population censuses: results and challenges regarding their use in the analysis of the urban

Population censuses: results and challenges regarding their use in the analysis of the urban Censos demográficos: resultados e desafios no seu uso para análise do urbanoThis dossier brings together texts that, in articulation, reveal the possibilities that population censuses offer for urban research.The Census is the only instrument that collects information on municipalities throughout the entire country and with a known periodicity, generally every ten years.It thus enables both specific and comparative analyses, across time and between places.Historically, Censuses have been the main source of data for urban research, both in Brazil and in other countries.They point to transformations in regional and urban structures, describe population and housing attributes, vectors of population redistribution, municipal growth, among others.In recent censuses, favelas and urban communities have also become objects of investigation.Censuses were also carried out in many empires of Antiquity, such as the Babylonian, Persian, Egyptian, and Roman.In the Book of Exodus, God orders Moses to count the number of men over 20 years old in the twelve tribes of Israel in order to define the share of offerings that should be assigned to each of them.The result of this survey gave rise to another book of the Pentateuch, appropriately named Numbers.And although there are historical contradictions in the accounts of Luke and Matthew, their Gospels indicate that it was due to the undertaking of a census that Joseph and Mary had to travel to Bethlehem, where Jesus was born (Carazza, 2021).The Romans, for example, conducted censuses throughout the empire every five years.They did not include all people, but focused on certain categories, such as heads of households, men of military age, and so on.The word itself is of Latin origin, meaning to measure, to estimate.The modern census began to be carried out by Nation-States in Europe and North America from the seventeenth century onwards, initially in Sweden (Levy, 1980, pp.86-102).The first population census in Brazil was conducted in 1872, during the Second Reign, at the request of Emperor Dom Pedro II.Before that, there had been precarious attempts to estimate how many Europeans, natives, and enslaved people lived in the vast territory since colonial times.During the Paraguayan War, which began in December 1864, the Brazilian Army suffered from the lack of statistical and cartographic information for the elaboration of military strategies (Carazza, 2021).