urban primacy

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the condition in which a country's largest city is disproportionately dominant in population, economic output, and political influence relative to the country's other cities, creating a primate city that dwarfs the urban hierarchy below it; urban primacy is common in developing countries and post-colonial states where colonial administrative structures concentrated investment in a single port or capital city; Bangkok contains approximately 50 times the population of Thailand's second city, making it one of the world's most extreme primate city examples; high urban primacy can generate agglomeration benefits but also concentrates risk, strains infrastructure, and can impede the development of secondary cities that might otherwise distribute growth more equitably across the national territory