Canoas vs The Hague

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Canoas (Portuguese pronunciation: [kaˈnoɐs]), which earned city status in 1939, is a municipality in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. With more than 340,000 inhabitants, it is part of the Porto Alegre conurbation and has the second highest GDP in the state. It is also the fourth largest city in the state by population. Canoas boasts a strong manufacturing-based economy and is the home of the Canoas Air Force Base, used by the Brazilian Air Force. According to the IBGE, Brazil's Geography and Statistics Institute, Canoas currently has no rural areas, but it started as a village of large landowners. The first of them was conquistador Francisco Pinto Bandeira, who received from the Portuguese Crown, in 1740, an area north of the Gravataí River. History has that 1871 was the beginning of the village of Canoas, when the first section of the railway that would link Porto Alegre to São Leopoldo was inaugurated.

Canoas was then part of the municipalities of Gravataí and São Sebastião do Caí. Soon large farms would lose space to small properties. After obtaining city status, Canoas experienced rapid growth, especially after 1945. At that time, it would be called a "cidade-dormitório" (Portuguese for "bedroom city"), because thousands of people would commute to neighboring Porto Alegre to work. However, de-industrialisation in Porto Alegre, the setting-up of numerous manufacturing plants in Canoas and a strong demographic growth have reverted that situation and nowadays Canoas has a per capita GDP higher than Porto Alegre.

Source: Wikipedia

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The Hague (; Dutch: Den Haag [dɛn ˈɦaːx] (listen) or 's‑Gravenhage [ˌsxraːvə(n)ˈɦaːɣə] (listen)) is a city on the western coast of the Netherlands on the North Sea and the capital of the province of South Holland. It is also the seat of government of the Netherlands and hosts the International Court of Justice, one of the most important courts in the world. With a metropolitan population of more than 1 million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam. The Rotterdam–The Hague metropolitan area, with a population of approximately 2.7 million, is the 10th-largest in the European Union and the most populous in the country. In the west of the Netherlands, The Hague is in the centre of the Haaglanden conurbation and lies at the southwest corner of the larger Randstad conurbation.

The Hague is the seat of the Cabinet, the States General, the Supreme Court, and the Council of State of the Netherlands, but the city is not the constitutional capital of the Netherlands, which is Amsterdam. King Willem-Alexander lives in Huis ten Bosch and works at the Noordeinde Palace in The Hague, together with Queen Máxima. Most foreign embassies in the Netherlands are located in the city. The Hague is also home to the world headquarters of Royal Dutch Shell and other Dutch companies. The Hague is known as the home of international law and arbitration. The International Court of Justice, the main judicial arm of the United Nations, is located in the city, as well as the International Criminal Court, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, Europol, and approximately 200 other international governmental organisations.

Source: Wikipedia