The municipality is formed by the headquarters and the districts of Água Vermelha, Bela Vista São-Carlense, Santa Eudóxia and Vila Nery.

Served by road and rail systems, São Carlos has a commercial unit of the Swiss multinational Leica Geosystems and production units of several multinational companies, including Volkswagen, Faber-Castell (the São Carlos subsidiary is the largest of the group in the world, producing 1.5 billion pencils per year), Electrolux, Tecumseh, Husqvarna, LATAM, Serasa Experian and Grupo Segurador BB-MAPFRE.

[3] The region started to be settled in the end of the 18th century, with the opening of a road that led to the gold mines in Cuiabá and Goiás.

Leaving from Piracicaba, passing through Rio Claro, the hills, fields and by typical vegetations of the Brazilian countryside, settlers established in the region.

On the city's foundation date, 4 November 1857, the population resided in some houses around the chapel and the inhabitants were mostly Arruda Botelho's family heirs, who were the first owners of the "Pinhal" allotments.

The city foundation is credited to Antônio Carlos de Arruda Botelho, Count of Pinhal, an influent farmer and entrepreneur.

The arrival of the railway in 1884 provided an efficient system to transport the coffee production to the Santos harbor and boosted the economy of the region.

In the beginning of the 20th century, countless cultural societies developed social activities aiming to promote literacy.

Farmers had already applied the profits obtained with coffee in the constitution of several types of companies in São Carlos: banks, electricity, cable cars, telephones, water pumps, sewers, theaters, hospitals and schools.

With the arrival of immigrants from other urban centers from the 1930s – 1940s, their expertise was used to consolidate industrialization as the main economic activity in the city.

The manufacture of processing machinery, shoes, fertilizers, hardware, furniture, pasta, cigars, as well as activities such as tailory, breweries, foundries, sawmills, weaving, pottery and pencil production expanded the economy of São Carlos in the 1930s.

It should be remembered that, in the meantime, the proportions indicated above, partly obtained from interpretations of satellite images, have some uncertainty due to the difficulty of differentiating artificial grasses from natural clean fields.

The urban area is cut by the rivers Monjolinho, Gregório and Santa Maria do Leme, and the streams Tijuco Preto, Simeão, Agua Quente and Água Fria, among others.

In rural areas, there are also fragments of important native vegetation in some private legal reserves (LR), such as Fazenda Canchim, by Embrapa.

As for pollution, the municipality has about two dozen areas contaminated, in particular, by waste from fuel stations, and dumps and landfills According to the Köppen Climate Classification, the city has a tropical climate Aw with dry winter and hot months According to data from the National Institute of Meteorology (INMET), since 1961 the lowest temperature recorded in São Carlos (conventional station of UFSCar) was 0,9 °C on 17 July 2000, and the highest reached 38.7 °C on 7 October 2020.

Moreover, another minor and private university, Centro Universitário Central Paulista (UNICEP), is also based in São Carlos, and community colleges like SENAI, SESI, SESC, SENAC and the Escola Técnica Estadual Paulino Botelho.

São Carlos' cultural life is marked by a young audience that enjoys musical concerts of Brazilian contemporary alternative artists that usually include the city in their tours.

There are two important events celebrated every year in the city, the Climate Party, which happens in April and has a traditional Orchid Exposition which features a craftwork fair and several food barracks.

An Oktobertech fest is held yearly along with the São Carlos High Tech Fair (Fealtec).

The company is currently an operator of cell phones, fixed lines, internet (fiber optics/4G) and television (satellite and cable).