The process of Brazilian urbanization has changed in the last twenty years. Studies in the regional economy have pointed to the strong influence of the expansion of export agriculture in areas of the border as a major determinant of the new urban dynamics in the period 1990-2008. Statistics are used to describe the expansion of agriculture in the area of Savannah in northeastern Brazil, and to examine the possible effects it had on the process of urbanization in the period. The analysis of the effects of urbanization due to the expansion of agriculture is a consequence of growth for soybean exports to adjacent areas of the provinces of Bahia (western Bahia), Maranhao (south Maranhao) and Piaui (southern Piaui). We conclude that the pattern of urbanization in the Northeast is characterized by a dynamic urban peripheral consequence of deepening social and spatial heterogeneity in recent years.38114173201