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Luzerna, a city of 5,794 inhabitants in the Midwest of Santa Catarina, scored 70 points in the IPS Brazil 2025 ranking and became the only municipality in Santa Catarina in the national top 10 for quality of life, surpassing Florianópolis, Joinville, Blumenau, and Balneário Camboriú.
A city that almost no one knows outside of Santa Catarina has just appeared among the ten best places in Brazil to live. Luzerna, a municipality with fewer than six thousand residents located in the Midwest of Santa Catarina, achieved 70 points in the IPS Brazil 2025 (Social Progress Index), a ranking developed by organizations such as the Institute of Man and Environment of the Amazon that evaluated the 5,570 Brazilian municipalities based on 57 social and environmental indicators. The city is the only one from Santa Catarina in the national top 10 and outperformed capitals and large urban centers, a result that calls into question the idea that quality of life is associated with population size.
The contrast is hard to ignore. The city that surpassed entire metropolises in the ranking has 5,794 inhabitants according to the 2022 Census by IBGE, with an estimate of 5,951 residents in 2025, and leads the state ranking leaving behind Florianópolis, Joinville, Blumenau, and Balneário Camboriú, municipalities with hundreds of thousands or millions of inhabitants and incomparably larger budgets. Luzerna was created in 1995, after separating from Joaçaba, and in three decades of administrative autonomy built indicators that place it among the best in the country in sanitation, education, security, and health.
What made this city of 6 thousand inhabitants surpass capitals in the ranking
Luzerna’s performance in the IPS 2025 was consistent across the three dimensions evaluated by the index. In the Basic Human Needs category, the city achieved 82 points, highlighting indicators of sanitation, housing conditions, and public safety, areas where small municipalities with efficient management can surpass large centers facing historical structural deficits. In Foundations of Well-Being, the score was 68.14, driven by results in education and healthcare. The third dimension, Opportunities, recorded 59.88 points, reflecting access to individual rights and the availability of higher education in the region.
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The proximity to Joaçaba, a regional hub in the Midwest of Santa Catarina, strengthens access to services that a city of this size would not normally offer alone. But what differentiates Luzerna from other small municipalities that are also close to larger centers is the combination of self-investment in strategic areas and an industrial economic base that generates income above the national average. The city’s per capita GDP reached R$ 59,770.33 in 2023, a figure that surpasses most Brazilian municipalities and demonstrates relevant productive activity for a place with fewer than six thousand inhabitants.
How education transformed this city into a national reference
Technical training is the most visible pillar of the model that Luzerna has built. The city invests in professional training from the early grades, with robotics, electricity, and automation programs offered in partnership with the Federal Institute of Santa Catarina and Senai, a strategy that prepares young people for the local industrial market and reduces migration to larger centers. The percentage of children aged 6 to 14 in school reaches 93.53%, and Luzerna’s HDI is 0.789, a high level by national standards.
This educational investment is not accidental. A city with a strong industrial profile needs a qualified workforce to keep its factories running, and Luzerna understood early on that training its own technicians is more efficient than competing for professionals with neighboring municipalities. The result is a virtuous cycle in which industry generates income, income finances education, education qualifies workers, and workers keep the industry competitive, a model that explains why such a small city achieves indicators that challenge metropolises.
The economy that sustains the city’s indicators in the ranking
Industry accounts for approximately 40% of Luzerna’s economic activity, a significant share for a municipality of any size and exceptional for one with fewer than six thousand residents. The service, public administration, and agriculture sectors complete the productive base, but it is the industrial vocation that differentiates the city and sustains the per capita GDP above R$ 59 thousand, revenue that translates into quality of life through public investment in health, education, and infrastructure. The proximity to Joaçaba, a regional economic hub, expands opportunities without diluting the administrative autonomy that Luzerna achieved in 1995.
The city’s public safety also reflects the economic profile. Municipalities with low unemployment, distributed income, and a small population tend to have lower violence rates than urban centers, and Luzerna confirms this correlation with investment in monitoring and efficient management that contribute to the good numbers in the IPS. In health, the city maintains public services that include elective surgeries, exams, and basic care, with an infant mortality rate of 14.71 per thousand live births, a level considered low by national standards.
What the case of Luzerna teaches about quality of life in Brazil
The result of this city in the IPS 2025 challenges the perception that only large urban centers can offer good living conditions. With focused management, investment in technical education, and an industrial economy that generates above-average income, Luzerna demonstrates that small municipalities can surpass metropolises when resources are applied strategically and the reduced scale allows for closer control of results. Three decades of administrative autonomy after the dismemberment from Joaçaba were sufficient to build a model that now serves as a reference.
For residents of Florianópolis, Joinville, Blumenau, and Balneário Camboriú who saw their cities fall behind Luzerna in the ranking, the result may provoke reflection. The capital of Santa Catarina, with all its infrastructure, universities, and billion-dollar budget, failed to achieve the score of a city that fits entirely within a neighborhood of Florianópolis. Size did not guarantee quality, and the case of Luzerna proves that the 57 indicators that measure social progress respond more to efficiency than to scale.
And you, did you know Luzerna? Would you live in a city of 6 thousand inhabitants that leads the quality of life ranking? Leave your opinion in the comments.
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