A ''bairro'' () is a

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

word for a

quarter A quarter is one-fourth, , 25% or 0.25. Quarter or quarters may refer to: Places * Quarter (urban subdivision), a section or area, usually of a town Placenames * Quarter, South Lanarkshire, a settlement in Scotland * Le Quartier, a settlement ...

or a neighborhood or, sometimes, a district which is within a city or town. It is commonly used in

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

Mozambique Mozambique (), officially the Republic of Mozambique ( pt, Moçambique or , ; ny, Mozambiki; sw, Msumbiji; ts, Muzambhiki), is a country located in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi ...

Guinea-Bissau Guinea-Bissau ( ; pt, Guiné-Bissau; ff, italic=no, 𞤘𞤭𞤲𞤫 𞤄𞤭𞤧𞤢𞥄𞤱𞤮, Gine-Bisaawo, script=Adlm; Mandinka: ''Gine-Bisawo''), officially the Republic of Guinea-Bissau ( pt, República da Guiné-Bissau, links=no ), ...

, and other Portuguese-speaking places. ''Bairro'' is cognate with Germanic ''berg'', ''burg'', ''borg'', ''burgh'', ''borough'' etc., and Spanish '' barrio'', all of which descend from the same

Proto-Indo European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...

root. In Brazil, the word is frequently applied to

urban area An urban area, built-up area or urban agglomeration is a human settlement with a high population density and infrastructure of built environment. Urban areas are created through urbanization and are categorized by urban morphology as cities ...

s in cities, in which the ''bairros'' are generally defined only unofficially and have rough borders, without any official administrative function. In some cities, however, the ''bairros'' have defined territorial limits set by the municipal government, but most follow popular definition by its citizens. In Portugal, the word is used with the same meaning as in Brazil, defining a non administrative urban area, frequently without clear borders, an example being the

Bairro Alto Bairro Alto (; literally: ''Upper District'') is a central district of the city of Lisbon, the Portuguese capital. Unlike many of the civil parishes of Lisbon, this region can be commonly explained as a loose association of neighbourhoods, with no ...

in Lisbon. Occasionally, a Portuguese ''bairro'' can coincide with an administrative ''

freguesia ''Freguesia'' (), usually translated as "parish" or "civil parish", is the third-level administrative subdivision of Portugal, as defined by the 1976 Constitution. It is also the designation for local government jurisdictions in the former Por ...

'' (civil parish). In the past, the cities of Lisbon and Porto were divided in large administrative divisions - each encompassing several ''freguesias'' - which were also named ''bairros''. In Mozambique, ''bairros'' are administrative subdivisions of urban districts with important functions in the identification of the residents and determine the attributes of the area in regard to construction or agriculture, much like

zoning Zoning is a method of urban planning in which a municipality or other tier of government divides land into areas called zones, each of which has a set of regulations for new development that differs from other zones. Zones may be defined for a si ...

. They are directed by ''secretários''. In Guinea-Bissau, ''bairros'' are first the peri-urban quarters of the capital Bissau beyond the old city centre (Praça), e.g. Bairro de Ajuda, Bairro Militar, Pessak, Quelele, Luanda, Mpantcha, and by extension quarters of smaller towns throughout the country.

See also