Primate City

A primate city is one that dominates the urban landscape of a country in terms of demographic weight and economic function. The term stems from an article published in the Geographical Review by Mark Jefferson in 1939. Jefferson described what he called the “law” of the primate city in countries where the largest city held a dominant position over the second- and third-largest cities by a constant ratio. The validity of this “law” has been greatly weakened over the intervening decades, but the general concept of a single urban place holding much greater significance demographically and economically than other cities in a state is still accepted and may be empirically demonstrated in numerous countries. If one extends the concept to include the phenomenon of the emerging megalopolis, found in many world regions as a single urban space, then these new primate “megacities” represent an urban dominance never before witnessed.

Many primate cities may be identified. Paris is more than eight times larger than the next largest city in France, and Mexico City is almost five times larger than Guadalajara, the country’s second most populous city. In the United States, a country with many large urban areas, New York is more than twice as large as Los Angeles. Such cities typically contain not only a large share of the country’s population, but also account for a disproportionate percentage of the country’s economic production. For example, the metropolitan area of New York produces over a trillion dollars of goods and services in an average year, a figure larger than many entire states in the United States. Furthermore, the city plays a magnified role in the country’s economy due to its hosting of the two largest stock exchanges  in the country, and because an enormous number of corporations have their headquarters in the city. The city also functions as a cultural center, serving as a capital for art, design, music, and theater. New York is somewhat unusual as a primate city in that it does not function as the national capital.