Primate city

"[5] Aside from size and population, a primate city will usually have precedence in all other aspects of its country's society such as economics, politics, culture, and education.

Primate cities also serve as targets for the majority of a country or region's internal migration.

[6] Urban primacy can be measured as the share of a country's population that lives in the primate city.

China does not have a primate city at a national level, but several provincial capitals are disproportionately larger than other urban areas in the respective provinces.

India does not have a primate city, as Delhi is not much larger than Mumbai or Kolkata in terms of population.

However, many Indian states, such as Karnataka, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, do have primate cities: Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai, respectively.

[16] As of 2022, Bangkok is nearly nine times larger than Thailand's current second-largest city of Chiang Mai, which has been growing in population and has also had its boundaries expanded to reflect that growth.

He cites the fact that most primate cities serving as national capitals contain major headquarters for the country.

Thus, logistically, it is rather "efficient" to target a national capital that is also a primate city; most of the governing power is contained in that one small area, and so are most of the people.

[19] The metropolitan area of the city of Moscow, the capital of Russia, is 2.3 times the size of the metropolitan area of the next largest city, Saint Petersburg,[20][21] and plays a unique and uncontested role of the cultural and political center of the country.

If excluding national capitals, examples include Gothenburg in Västra Götaland, Sweden, Bergen in Vestland and Trondheim, Trøndelag in Norway, Tampere in Pirkanmaa, Finland and Aarhus in Midtjylland, Denmark.

These two metropolitan areas have around 40% the country's population and are multiple times larger than the third-biggest city, Braga.

In California, the population of Los Angeles (~4 million) is nearly three times that of the second-largest city in the state, San Diego.

[48] Canada also has several primate cities at the provincial level: Vancouver, BC; Winnipeg, MB; Toronto, ON; Montreal QC; Halifax, NS; and St. John's, NL.