The second volume of the Atlas of Portuguese Cities (Atlas das Cidades de Portugal) is a follow-up to the release of information on important urban areas of the country. This issue is essentially based on the massive wealth of information made available with the final Census 2001 results, at the statistical sub-section level, and is justified by the fact that an important part of this information was not yet available when the first volume was issued. In parallel, an essential objective of this publication was to present an integrated city analysis, thereby facilitating comparative reading.

For this purpose, national maps were constructed, with representations of all cities (141 in total), performance rankings and charts with the relative positioning of selected cities vis-à-vis Portugal and the city average, for the major indicators shown:

Share of youth Birth rate Death rate; Mean age of women at birth of first child Illiteracy rate; Rental of all or part of the housing unit as usual household residence; Higher education participation rate; Share of the resident population employed in manufacturing, Share of the resident population employed in services and Ageing index of the building.