# Primate cities



## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

Primate cities are major cities that works as the financial, political, and population centre of a country and is not rivaled in any of these aspects by any other city in that country. Usually the population of primate cities are twice as much as the second largest city in that country.

Some of the most known primate cities would be London, Paris, Athens, Mexico City, Cairo or Kuala Lumpur where these cities serve as the political and economic centres of their respective country.

Countries such as The United States, China, Canada, Australia or Brazil have several regional centres.

What is your opinion on primate cities? What are the advantages and disadvantage of them? Is a country better off with one primate city or have several regional centres?


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## Huhu (Jun 5, 2004)

"Primate Cities" are more prevalent in geographically smaller countries, they also tend to develop where the primary political and commercial centres are united in one city. Larger countries with dispersed populations would need several centres to function properly.


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## Xusein (Sep 27, 2005)

The US is way too large and diverse to have a primate city.

However, when it comes to regions, it's possible to say that New York is the Northeast's primate city.


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

Huhu said:


> "Primate Cities" are more prevalent in geographically smaller countries, they also tend to develop where the primary political and commercial centres are united in one city. Larger countries with dispersed populations would need several centres to function properly.


Thats not always the case. Argentina is one of the largest countries in South America but it has a primal city (Buenos Aires).


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

10ROT said:


> The US is way too large and diverse to have a primate city.
> 
> However, when it comes to regions, it's possible to say that New York is the Northeast's primate city.


Primate cities would extent in regions particularly in The United States, Canada or Australia. 

That would be true with New York when it comes to the East Coast but the political centre of NY state is still Albany.


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## drunkenmunkey888 (Aug 13, 2005)

Primate cities often cause people to regard only the city when the country is mentioned in any context. Often the rest of the country is forgotten. For example, few people can name another city besides the capital in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, South Korea, North Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, England (although not Great Britain), Mongolia, or Romania. An extreme example is Lebanon where half the population lives in Beirut. On the other extreme, you have places like South Africa where there are three political capitals. Generally large countries do not have primate cities while smaller countries do. However, many exceptions exist, for example, Moscow and Jakarta are certainly the primate cities, both in countries with over 100,000,000 people. Switzerland does not have a primate city and its population is under 10,000,000.

Personally, I believe that for a country with a population under 100 million, then a primate city would be very helpful because for a smaller country, it would be wise to consolidate much of its national potential in one super-concentrated center of political, economic, educational, and cultural power in order to be influential on the global stage. With countries over 100 million though, concentrating too much in one small location can be crippling because of the social tensions that uneven distribution of power can entail. Therefore, a more disbursed center of power can placate larger populations


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Smells like a city vs. city contest in each country.


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## Huhu (Jun 5, 2004)

WANCH said:


> Thats not always the case. Argentina is one of the largest countries in South America but it has a primal city (Buenos Aires).


True, I was trying to think of a good exception but couldn't come up with one until you pointed it out. Is most of the population concentrated around the Río de la Plata, or more spread out?


drunkenmunkey888 said:


> Primate cities often cause people to regard only the city when the country is mentioned in any context. Often the rest of the country is forgotten. For example, few people can name another city besides the capital in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, South Korea, North Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, England (although not Great Britain), Mongolia, or Romania. An extreme example is Lebanon where half the population lives in Beirut. On the other extreme, you have places like South Africa where there are three political capitals. Generally large countries do not have primate cities while smaller countries do. However, many exceptions exist, for example, Moscow and Jakarta are certainly the primate cities, both in countries with over 100,000,000 people. Switzerland does not have a primate city and its population is under 10,000,000.


I think you have to look at the specific histories of countries as well. Switzerland was created as a loose confederation of different principalities, which naturally allowed different cities to develop since the centre was weak. How about Germany? It was also until relatively recently a collection of different regions, resulting in no clear "primate city" in my opinion. Yet it is only slightly larger size and population wise than France and the UK.

England and France were under strong royal/central governments for long periods of time that centralized all wealth and power around the royal capitals of London and Paris. I think that is why those two cities dominated their respective countries so thoroughly.


drunkenmunkey888 said:


> Personally, I believe that for a country with a population under 100 million, then a primate city would be very helpful because for a smaller country, it would be wise to consolidate much of its national potential in one super-concentrated center of political, economic, educational, and cultural power in order to be influential on the global stage. With countries over 100 million though, concentrating too much in one small location can be crippling because of the social tensions that uneven distribution of power can entail. Therefore, a more disbursed center of power can placate larger populations


I don't think that it's just population, ie. the suggested 100 million threshold. The geographical spread of population and physical size of the country could also warrant multiple centres (ie. Australia, Canada).


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

Huhu said:


> True, I was trying to think of a good exception but couldn't come up with one until you pointed it out. Is most of the population concentrated around the Río de la Plata, or more spread out?


Here's Argentina's distribution










The largest cities lie in The Pampean Region



> I think you have to look at the specific histories of countries as well. Switzerland was created as a loose confederation of different principalities, which naturally allowed different cities to develop since the centre was weak. How about Germany? It was also until relatively recently a collection of different regions, resulting in no clear "primate city" in my opinion. Yet it is only slightly larger size and population wise than France and the UK.


Germany is very interesting. It has no primal city but has several regional centres.


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## yin_yang (May 29, 2006)

Toronto is definitely a primate city...a PH.D says so.


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## canadave87 (Oct 8, 2007)

yin_yang said:


> Toronto is definitely a primate city...a PH.D says so.


Yeah, I'd tend to agree. Maybe not an extreme example, but it certainly has a much larger footprint than either Montreal or Vancouver, the next biggest cities in the country.

I'd say the same holds true for Sydney, as well, though I don't know the Australian situation as well.


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## hudkina (Oct 28, 2003)

Uh Toronto isn't the capital of Canada...


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

hudkina said:


> Uh Toronto isn't the capital of Canada...


Its *Ottawa*. Toronto is the capital of Ontario


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

WANCH said:


> Its *Ottawa*. Toronto is the capital of Ontario


To put some context into all this. Toronto *was* Canada's capital for a brief period time in history, but the decision was to move it away from the American border, and the capital moved to Ottawa, which was in the middle of nowhere between Toronto and Montreal. This was obviously for defensive purposes.


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## canadave87 (Oct 8, 2007)

Duh, I didn't see the bit about it acting as a political centre.

Even so, I think the argument can still be made, as Toronto has more political power than any other single area in Canada, especially when the corporate weight of the city is considered.


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## jarbury (Aug 20, 2007)

Does a primate city _have_ to be the capital? Auckland in New Zealand definitely dominates the country, yet is not the capital.


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

jarbury said:


> Does a primate city _have_ to be the capital? Auckland in New Zealand definitely dominates the country, yet is not the capital.


With the defined term, a primate city acts as the economic, cultural, population and *political* center of a particular country. 

Yes it has to be the capital too


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## Küsel (Sep 16, 2004)

I think some of you people don't get really the concept of a primate city. It doesn't just mean that it's the biggest metro in the country but that it dominates practically all concerns of human life in this country, eg. finances, politics, economy, culture, sports, events, media etc. - and demography.

The most typical examples are Paris and Bangkok but also most African countries have a primate city thanks to the lack of infrastructure networks outside of it (lack of money as well). Counter-examples are Germany. The more centralist and less democratic a country the higher is the chance that it develops a primate city for the leaders want to concentrate culture and economy as well as media around them to have influence and control (Iraq, Myanmar, Central Africa).

The optimal distribution of demography in a country is defined by the rank-order formula that says that the second metro is half the size of the first, the third metro one third etc... Switzerland or Brazil are relativelly good examples. But that's only demographics, and thus is not the only relevant factor.


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

I thought that this thread was going to be about Gorillas and Chimpanzees building cities


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## Küsel (Sep 16, 2004)

Gibbons, buddy, gibbons! (Hylobates lar to specify it!) :lol:


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## _00_deathscar (Mar 16, 2005)

Primate city? Oh the opportunity of endless jokes...


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