The US has NO Primate City-Urban geography here (metro, largest, Munich)

[StuyTownRefugee]

All you city buffs, are you aware of what a Primate city is? Here's a little tip from professional urban geography. Maybe you sense it but you don't know what to call it.

It helps to understand the configuration and balance of the US but especially the world in the global order and world city rankings. The use by urban demographers, geographers, planners and the like that compile all the data we seek is a measurement of balance for a country and its relationships with its cities domestically and internationally.

It demonstrates why our country is technically more balanced and why most Americans are not intimidated by some cities in the world hegemony any more than another and can usually rival most of them if theirs is one among the 6 global cities the US has among the world total. Americans can be unfettered by the storied pomp of some of our own as well as others. For instance the financial and cultural centers of LA, NY, Chicago, and others are dispersed because the political center of the country is located at Washington, DC. New York in ways tries to claim such a preeminence in America and tries to behave as if its importance is that comparable of a primate, but not being the political center it isn't and cannot be. If it were a Primate city and if the US had one it would likely be a developing nation or least developed because of its size. Lets hope the others such as Chicago or LA if there population comes they get the largest designation in pop but doesn't try to behave as if it were a primate in some other country. All this off the wall talk here often about one city being the "IT" city, that's not even a capital of a country, let alone any country's primate city, can't attest to being some sort of a supra world capital. It doesn't follow.

America isn't a one horse country like some people (Harumpph) would like to have us believe. I prefer a country as diverse as the US.



A primate city is a major city that works as the financial, political, and population center of a country and is not rivaled in any of these aspects by any other city in that country.

Normally, a primate city must be at least twice as populous as the second largest city in the country. The presence of a primate city in a country usually indicates an imbalance in development — usually a progressive core, and a lagging periphery, on which the primate city depends for labor and other resources.

[1] Not all countries have primate cities (Germany, India, and the People's Republic of China for example), but in those that do, the rest of the country depends on it for cultural, economic, political, and major transportation needs. Among the best known examples of primate cities are alpha world cities of London and Paris. Other major primate cities include Seoul, Mexico City, Vienna, Cairo, Buenos Aires, Bangkok, Tehran, Baghdad, and Athens.

Some examples of nations without a primate city would include India, with the four main cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai; Brazil, whose capital and political centre, Brasilia, is dwarfed in size and culture by both São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro; Italy, whose political seat at Rome is balanced by its business, financial and fashion "capital" of Milan; Australia, which has many large cities including Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, while the political centre resides in the smaller city of Canberra;

and the United States, whose financial and cultural centres are widely dispersed throughout the country in cities such as New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles and whose political centre is located in Washington, D.C. Germany's political center is Berlin, though its financial center is Frankfurt and cultural center split between Berlin, Munich, Dresden and smaller cities. Additionally, Mumbai, São Paulo, Sydney, and Frankfurt have close competitors as their countries' largest cities (Delhi, Rio de Janeiro, Melbourne, and Munich respectively).

Some countries, such as the United States, Australia and Canada, have regional and/or provincial/state primate cities, such as Atlanta, Georgia; Winnipeg, Manitoba; and Perth in Western Australia.
Primate city - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


DC's always there to rival the others and that's the ultimate capital of the world imo.

No big complicated concept but it makes a big difference.

Sorry if this is too Political or Urban Geography 101 for some of you.

[18Montclair]

About Brazil,
Having lived there, Rio gets all the attention, but Sao Paulo is definitely the center of gravity. And this goes beyond just economics imo. Sao Paulo is a cultural mecca for the whole nation as well.

[StuyTownRefugee]

Originally Posted by 18Montclair

About Brazil,
Having lived there, Rio gets all the attention, but Sao Paulo is definitely the center of gravity. And this goes beyond just economics imo. Sao Paulo is a cultural mecca for the whole nation as well.

But as you know Brazil has no primate city. But lucky you, you lived there, i'ts one of the places I really want to see and haven't seen yet.

But I can tell Sao Paolo is the financial capital and largest city, but it's not a primate. Probably Rio is equally a transport and services hub but the political center of the country is in Brasilia.

[chitownwarrior]

Montclair, vc e brasileiro???

[Vagus]

Primate city?

Pretty unfortunate choice of words. Made me think of a city inhabited by monkeys . . .

I think "primary" or "principal" or "paramount" or something like that would probably be better . . .

[StuyTownRefugee]

Originally Posted by Vagus

Primate city?

Pretty unfortunate choice of words. Made me think of a city inhabited by monkeys . . .

I think "primary" or "principal" or "paramount" or something like that would probably be better . . .

It's from "primacy" rather. But yeah if it's primates it would be the "Law of the Jungle" see below:

Primate Cities


As in physics with its laws of gravity, etc , geographers see this as a 'law' but a little moreso as a model.

The Law of the Primate City and the Rank-Size Rule


Primate Cities

Utilizing the metropolitan area population of urban areas in the United States, we find that the U.S. lacks a true primate city. With the New York City metropolitan area population at approximately 21 million, second ranked Los Angeles at 16 million, and even third ranked Chicago at 9 million, America lacks a primate city.

The model is further applied and useful for the US where the populations of the second city's domain is growing much faster than the first city in population.

Plus there are others that are challenging the second and even 3rd spots.

I guess we're just too dynamic to have one.

[M TYPE X]

It's a strange term to capture an easy idea. A lot of countries are so centralized in their political economy (system of business and culture) that their societies are ruled with an iron first by an all-powerful center of social power.

I think we should we happy we don't have "a" London, Paris, or Tokyo in this country. We need economic and social diversity to ensure that we are not reliant on any one model or plan.

[StuyTownRefugee]

Originally Posted by M TYPE X

It's a strange term to capture an easy idea. A lot of countries are so centralized in their political economy (system of business and culture) that their societies are ruled with an iron first by an all-powerful center of social power.

I think we should we happy we don't have "a" London, Paris, or Tokyo in this country. We need economic and social diversity to ensure that we are not reliant on any one model or plan.

Sorry for the long post.

Primacy or having a 'Primate' city relates to underdevelopment of a country, region, or nation. So yes, it does intimate or imply retardation. That's why the term is more fitting and is quite neutral and mechanical in dealing with measurements. It also suggests as "primate", a guerilla beating its chest, king of the jungle type, dictatorial, try to be all powerful trying to control everything in and out of the country or personally as in the case of a desperate adolescent child. The entire body politic suffers from the ruthlessness and ego/ethnocentrism. Lots of earlier govt systems especially medieval were this way, totalitarian, despotic, feudal, just as you mentioned, and undemocratic, dictatorial and monarchial until a higher stage of development or maturation takes place. In a balanced hierarchical order he's caged and hamstrung or the tiger is taken by the tail, so to speak. Even city hierarchies mirror checks and balance, but especially within the American framework. In general it suggests as "primate" a stunted level of development for a political entity. see further below.

I think they picked it right once the concept is familiar.

Rank Size Rule and Primate City

The Rank Size Rule notes the relationship between the ranks of cities and their populations.
It was advanced by Zipf in 1941
The formula is Pn=P1/n where Pn is the population of towns ranked n, P1 is the population of the largest town and n is the rank of the town.
For example, if the largest town has a population of x, the second largest town will have a population of x/2, the 3rd largest will have a population of x/3 and so on.

The Law of the Primate City
The primate city is the largest most dominant city in a region.
The degree of primacy refers to the dominance of the largest city over the rest of the country.
Most LDCs (Less Developed Countries) have a high degree of primacy while most MDCs (More Developed Countries) have a low degree of primacy.
Factors that affect high primacy include
Having an underdeveloped economy
Having an agriculturally dominant economy
A rapidly expanding population
A recent colonial history

The USA has a very low degree of primacy.

Primate (of primacy) was likely chosen because it relates to a stage (early) of development for a country, those having primate cities being much more likely to be located in underdeveloped economies where one city is often the only 'developed' part (imbalance), as a rule. Hence, primate essentially being "first stage" (not unlike referenced to mammal primates) for the region it dominates, any city's personality come to mind? just kidding).

Yes, this is the simple one, but powerful, this Size/Rank distribution model, but there are others besides Zipf's Law: the Yule or Pareto Distributions. It's all about distributions and balances of power within a hierarchy. Another will use an inclusino of a 4th and 5th city to add wieghts that solidify balance in the hierarchy. In our discussions on city-data, we have those now, insert preferred city here Dallas/FtW, San Francisco, DC, Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta in positons. But talking pure numbers here who might emerge?, who might be rearranged?, who will replace who? or will be displaced or dethroned?

But some models,as mentioned below, take into account that the 4 and 5 with more complicated models that cities can offer the same services as the 1,2,3 slots and are weighted again by the next 4,5,6 slots which have a lot of importance even if their bulk numbers (pop) are diminished within the power/ranking systems. The results of more intricate models take more into account and in some given a coefficient in other forumale that ends up with more exacting and precise accuracies with more stable proofs and validities.

<<If one ranks the population size of cities in a given country or in the entire world and calculates the natural logarithm of the rank and of the city population, the resulting graph will show a remarkable log-linear pattern. This is the rank-size distribution.

In the case of city populations, the resulting distribution in a country, region or the world will be characterized by a largest city, the primate city, with other cities decreasing in size respective to it, initially at a rapid rate and then more slowly. This results in a few large cities, and a much larger number of cities orders of magnitude smaller. For example, a rank 3 city would have ? the population of a country's primate city, a rank four city would have ¼ the population of the primate city, and so on.

Why should simple rank be able to predict so easily such complex distributions? In short, why does the rank size rule “work?” One study has shown why this is so.
The distributions mentioned above such as Zipf, Pareto, Yule, etc., also called power laws, are all also related to the distribution known as the Fibonacci sequence and to that of the equiangular spiral. In the Fibonacci sequence, each term is approximately 1.618 (the Golden ratio) times the preceding term. A special case of the Fibonacci sequence is the Lucas sequence consisting of these sequentially additive numbers 1, 3, 4, 7, 11, 18, 29, 47, 76, 123, 199 ,…...>> to mention a few and so on for other math models. This just gives an idea some that are used to determine power rank validities.

All produce close to the same results in various degrees of accuracies with proofs of the models and formuale that validate the more simple model, Zipf's, Pn=P1/n...

Your assertions are valuable politically too as these power rules and laws can also be applied. Perhaps you'd like some further info on what you stated. A number of scholars have expanded further on what you implied, you're not at all of the mark how it relates to the urban, political, and economic geography fields. Good going.

"Romes without Empires"
abstract
Many developing economies are characterized by the dominance of a super metropolis. The coexistence of a primate city with a low level of economic development is not an accident, the former being symptomatic of the causes of the latter. Taking historical Rome... as the archetype ........ When political power is decentralized across different self-interested rulers in diverse jurisdictions, the competition over the mobile resources leads to lower tax/expropriation rates, raising the long-run rate of growth of the economy.
"Romes without Empires": Primate Cities, Political Competition, and Economic Growth

[milquetoast]

FutureCop, where are you? Set 'em all straight!

[18Montclair]

I suppose not having a primate city indicates that the US economy is highly diversified and has several centers of gravity. Interesting.