Primate City

A primate city is the largest and most dominant city in a country or region and often functions also as a financial or political center. In the 1930s, the geographer Mark Jefferson developed the law of the primate city to explain the phenomenon of cities that capture a large proportion of a country's population as well as its economic activity. He wrote that “a country's leading city is always disproportionately large and exceptionally expressive of national capacity and feeling.” In fact, a primate city is usually twice as big in population size as the next largest city and, correspondingly, more significant.

Primate cities are frequently but not always the capital cities of the country. An excellent example is London; in 2001, it had a population of 8 million people, whereas the second-largest city, Birmingham, had about 970,000 residents. France in 2000 had Paris as its primate city at 2 million residents, while Marseilles, the second largest, had a population of 795,600. Mexico and South Korea also have primate cities, Mexico City and Seoul, respectively.

Not all countries have a primate city; that is, a largest city that is twice the size of the next-largest city. India's largest city in 2000 was Mumbai, which has more than 16 million people; second was Kolkata with more than 13 million people; and third was Delhi with less than 13 million people. Canada, Australia, and Brazil also lack primate cities. In the case of the United States, the largest city in 2000 was New York City with 8 million people, second was Los Angeles with 3.8 million people, and third was Chicago with 2.8 million people. But when we use the population of the metropolitan area rather than of the central city, we find that the United States lacks a true primate city. The New York City metropolitan area had a population of 18.6 million, Los Angeles 12.8 million, and Chicago 9 million.

The degree of primacy refers to the dominance of the largest city over the rest of the country. In developed countries where the degree of primacy is low, the population, along with political and economic power, has dispersed. Various social and economic functions are linked to one another across cities by well-integrated, efficient, and reliable transportation and communication systems. In these city-regions, even the smallest villages are connected in a web of trade, transportation, and communication networks. In contrast, in developing countries in Latin America and Southeast Asia that have a single primate city, that city has preeminent influence on the politics, economics, and culture of the country. Moreover, in terms of transportation and communications links, the primate city might be better connected to the outside world than to other regions or to other cities within the country.

Such primate cities often attract overseas investment and benefits. They also use up a disproportionate amount of resources and create serious problems such as shortages of goods and escalating land prices that make them less attractive places in which to live. The spatial concentration of resources also creates regional disparities of wealth and income and political influence.

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