In the 1980s, Novo Hamburgo received the nickname of "the national capital of shoes", attracting many athletes, tracks and companies connected to the sport.

Nowadays, the city is the industrial centre of the Sinos River Valley, the economy of which is based mainly on the manufacture of shoes and the associated leather goods supply chain.

The Germans established a prosperous agricultural colony and eventually started to supply the state's main urban centers at that time with food.

At this time, the shoe industry was in full swing and there was an intense expansion of trade and an abundance of work for the service providers in the region.

The governor at that time was Borges de Medeiros who subsequently asked the commission to submit a formal application including voter signatures requesting emancipation.

Three years later on the 5 April 1927, Borges de Medeiros signed decree number 3818, known as "The order Gold" creating the municipality Novo Hamburgo.

On the same day decree number 3819 was signed creating an administration with a constitutional basis and allowing for the nomination of a temporary mayor.

The city also has industries in the area of pharmacy, cosmetics, furniture, food, appliances, clothing, graphic art, electronics, chemical and constructions.

A new Industrial District is being planned in the area of Lomba Grande, however some locals have voiced concerns that this construction may have environmental implications.

[4] Novo Hamburgo has developed a complete infrastructure for production, marketing and trading of footwear, and now has the largest movement of containers in Brazil.

In the shopping district there are four large supermarkets (Wal-Mart, recently sold by the parent multinational and now under different ownership), Carrefour, Bourbon (Zaffari) and Hiper Rissul.

[6] The Feevale University inaugurated on 20 September 2011 the largest theatre in the state of Rio Grande do Sul with a capacity to 1,805 spectators in Novo Hamburgo.

The creation of this school was a big step for women's education, although still largely focused on traditional values such as child rearing and home care.

The first Catholic school created in the town was Santa Catarina college founded on the 10 June 1900[8] by the Sisters Maria Romualda Flash and Maria Julitta Schwark, who were invited to come to the Hamburg Berg region (which would later become Hamburgo Velho) by several families – Czermak, Carlos Klein, José Kroeff, João Altmeyer, Zimmer and Plentz.

The Jesuit priests arrived in the Sinos River Valley region in the mid-nineteenth century and took over the Church Nossa Senhora da Piedade in Hamburgo Velho.

Notable buildings along this street are the St. Catherine College, the building of the former Frohsin Society, designed by the German architect Theo Wiederspahn, the homes of the families Richter, Klein, Momberger, Snel, and Grunner, This street is recognized by the City Master Plan as an area of historical and cultural interest.

The downtown area has landmarks such as the Monument to the Shoemaker, Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis Gonzaga, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Ascension, both historical constructions of the 1950s.

It is considered environmentally protected area where the wetlands of the Sinos River is very important for the preservation of the ecosystem, both fauna as flora.

Lomba Grande also received the first German immigrants who settled in the Hemp Linen factory, then owned by the municipality of São Leopoldo.

The German craftsmen eventually started to manufacture shoes and machinery on a large scale and in the 1960s began to export goods, a process that transformed the city into a magnet for internal immigrants from impoverished areas around the state and the country.

This caused significant demographic growth that was not accompanied by the infrastructure needed to accommodate the recently arrived population; favelas then formed.

Today's Novo Hamburgo depends heavily upon shoe exports, although it diversified its industrial and commercial base in the early 1990s.

Jornal NH is part of Grupo Sinos, a conglomerate of regional newspapers, magazines, radio and digital content.

There are some places that offer tennis courts and host sport competitions such as Sociedade Ginástica, Aliança and Wallau Centro de Esportes.

In the city, it is also possible to practice or attend games and competitions in tennis, volleyball, punhobol, futsal, archery, handball, bicycle motocross, among other activities.

[18] The history of the railways of Rio Grande do Sul date back to 1866 with proposals for construction in the Sinos River Valley region.

Only in 1882 the Novo Hamburgo station was connected at the village which was named as Hamburguer Berg, this line eventually was extended to Canela in 1922.