Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
2020. A 2004 report in the Hindustan Times abhorred
the fact that middle-class commuters seldom bother to
stop if they injure or kill a homeless person or street
child.
In urban China, where cars—owned by middle and
upper classes—are filling streets formerly dominated by
bicycles, hundreds of thousands of automobile accidents
occur each year. For example, almost a quarter million
Chinese were killed or seriously injured in the first five
months of 2003.
More than half of Asia' s largest cities are in India and
China. With some 170 cities with at least a million in-
habitants, China has more large cities than any country
on earth.
Some countries show a marked degree of urban
primacy , whereby the population of the largest city is
greater than the combined populations of the next
three largest cities (Figure 4-8). The largest city is then
referred to as a primate city . Countries exhibit varying
degrees of primacy depending on the population differ-
ential between the largest and next largest cities. Pri-
mate cities house relatively large proportions of
national populations. Greater Seoul, for instance,
houses 35 percent of South Korea' s urban population,
while more than a quarter of city-dwelling Japanese
URBAN PRIMACY
T Today, , most of the world' s largest cities are in develop-
ing countries with increasing numbers of these in Asia.
P'yongyang
Sea of
Japan
Seoul
T okyo
East
China Sea
Karachi
Dhaka
Pacific Ocean
South
China Sea
Manila
Yangon
Bangkok
Bay of
Bengal
Arabian Sea
Primate cities
2 million +
Ho Chi Minh City
Kuala Lumpur
Singapore
Indian Ocean
0
0
500
1000 mi
Jakarta
500
1000 km
Figure 4-8
Urban primacy: cities of 2 million plus. Both India and China have many cities of a million or
more inhabitants, but most of their people remain farmers.
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