Proposed section: Historical examples[edit]

For cities that were previously primate cities during human history. RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 07:34, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What is a "city", what a "metropolitan area"?[edit]

The problem is with contiguous metropolitan areas. Unless one lives there and notices that, say, it's a different administration collecting the taxes & fees, to everybody else it's one city: no gaps in the built-up area, same city buses for the entire area, streets keep their name once they cross invisible municipality borders, etc. In one case they might call it a metropolitan area with N different towns, in another - a city with N boroughs. Until that is solved, the definition here remains vague. Arminden (talk) 06:13, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What you say is true - but it seems to me that the desirable sensible solution (which I would support just as you would) can only happen in theory, unless some supra-national authority takes away the right of governments to set and negotiate internal boundaries. (Obviously, the creation of such an authority would create other problems.) TooManyFingers (talk) 03:30, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think you misunderstood a bit what I meant. It wasn't political, it was semantic, if that's the right word: it's about terminology and definitions. If a large inhabited area works in most relevant ways as one unit, why call it by a different name than a very similar one, which self-defines the whole and the admin. subunits by different words? One can preserve the local terms for "local colour" in the respective contexts, but when analysed academically or encyclopedically (Wiki) from an outside, neutral position, one must, in my opinion, use a single well-defined term for all items corresponding to that definition.
An example: one should maybe use the terms "Soviet cosmonaut" and "NASA astronaut" for historical accuracy, but if within an academic or encyclopedic work the author (on Wiki: editors) defines them all as "extra-athmospheric travellers" or "chuckwhimbs", the article may very well go on, after the term has been defined, with only using, for all of them, "extra-athmospheric travellers" or "chuckwhimbs". PC bullshit wants us now to use the specific Indian and Chinese terms, and how many more will follow?
But I'm drifting away. Here it was concrete: what's the encyclopedic difference between a "metropolitan area" of M million inhabitants and N different "towns", and a large/mega "city" of also M million inhabitants and the same number, N, of "boroughs"? Is there a difference relevant to Wiki, or are we just being dumb? Because analysing, comprehending, and drawing a rational conclusion is what defines cognitive intelligence. Arminden (talk) 12:49, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with what I think is your main point: in reality, a city is the entirety of some large contiguously-populated area, any boundaries that pass through parts of it are artificial and arbitrary, and in general such artificial boundaries tend to impede study and understanding.
However, I think there are situations in which artificial boundaries are undeniably significant and need to be taken into account. For example, would it have been right for encyclopedias in the 1960s through 1980s period to persist in treating the population of the entire Berlin area as a single unit? Admittedly that is an extreme example, but it's also a reminder that administrative boundaries can be significant in at least some cases, and it will sometimes be a mistake to ignore them.
And I think part of the point of my earlier message was to say "OK, but if we follow your proposal, who gets to make the decisions?" If local governments (or regional, or national) are not to be trusted to set city boundaries correctly, who are we going to trust instead? In your response I can't find which other entity we're supposed to trust as our source of data and refer our disputes to, unless it happens to be you. :) TooManyFingers (talk) 20:16, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Istanbul?...[edit]

The article lists Istanbul as the first example of a primate city, and I find this rather problematic...

My general understanding of what it means to be a country's "primate city" is that it's:

1) The capital city.

2) The country's most important cultural and financial center.

3) Larger in population than the second and third largest cities combined.

Istanbul meets the second and third criteria, but not the first, since Ankara is Turkey's capital city.

Now of course one could argue that Istanbul is Turkey's most important city in terms of political influence, even if the seat of government isn't located there. And perhaps in some cases a city being "primate" or not is a bit ambiguous, with there being something of a continuum, but there are so many other cities which are much more clearly and unambiguously primate in nature...

Ironically, several of them are listed towards the end of the first paragraph - "Mexico City, Paris, Cairo, Jakarta, and Seoul have been described as primate cities in their respective countries." - and yet written in a way that suggests uncertainty as to whether or not they're primate cities - saying that they've "been described" as such, rather than simply that they are, thus suggesting that some people might disagree with that description. But all of those listed in that sentence are much more clearly primate than Istanbul is for Turkey. -2003:CA:8710:6F33:C4B4:70CB:C682:86B2 (talk) 20:33, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Istanbul is a primate city and needs to be added to the "List" section in the article, because it fulfills the criteria. It is already included in the article for the above mentioned reasons. Istanbul's population is 15,569,856 (December 2022, Source: 1, Turkish Statistical Institute) and has 3.0 times the population of the second largest city, the capital Ankara, which is 5,187,949 (December 2022, Source: 2, Turkish Statistical Institute). Istanbul's GDP makes up 30.4% of Turkey's GDP, at 2 trillion 202 billion 156 million Turkish Liras for the year 2021. (Source: 3, Turkish Statistical Institute) Multituberculata (talk) 11:29, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wellington and Auckland[edit]

The article says:

A non-capital primate city may also emerge organically:

and gives Auckland and Wellington as an example. But as far as I'm aware, Auckland was already the larger of the two, and was the de facto original capital, and the choice of Wellington as capital was part of a conscious political strategy to position the government nearer to the South Island. So is this truly "organic"? TooManyFingers (talk) 03:04, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Map is also wrong as it shows NZ as not having a primate city, when in fact Auckland is, in fact, almost 5 times larger than Christchurch and Wellington, and is the only city in NZ with a popultion greater than 1 million. 33% of the country's population and 38% of the national economy. No other city or urban area in New Zealand having a population greater than 450,000 202.62.41.81 (talk) 07:31, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that's true, please include your source. Alexeyevitch(talk) 12:04, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Do you disagree with the numbers at List of New Zealand urban areas by population? Largoplazo (talk) 15:00, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I commend your enthusiasm! Alexeyevitch(talk) 20:02, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Limit[edit]

If primacy requires that a city be more than twice the population of the next in line, should we remove Tokyo and Cairo? DS (talk) 19:52, 15 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

202.62.41.81 (talk) 07:37, 12 March 2024 (UTC) Even if you only look at a limited definition of Tokyo, it is 3 times bigger than Yokohama. However Yokohama is part of Greater Tokyo, which has a population close to 40 million, and Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto are close to 20 million, so I see your point, but Tokyo does act like a primate city in the context of Japan. Interesting idea. 07:37, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The tables are not helpful[edit]

I think the tables are rather silly. They encourage the addition of cities in small countries which would never be described in sources as "primate cities" (e.g. with all respect to St Kitts and Nevis, Basseterre). And they suggest that primacy is a completely objective measure which can be measured by "population of city rank 1 is more than double population of city rank 2", whereas the rest of the article indicates its more nuanced than that. I think it would be better to only retain cities in the table if a reliable source describes it as a primate city. Matthewmayer (talk) 03:36, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A similar was floating through my mind yesterday. As you say, it isn't a precise arithmetic definition, so WP:2+2=4 doesn't suffice to exempt the inclusion of a city in the table from the prohibition of WP:OR if the designation of it as a primate city isn't sourced. By the time you reached the end of your comment, though, you were contradicting your first sentence, which implied that the tables should be removed rather than restricted to sourced entries. I'm in favor of the latter. Largoplazo (talk) 09:51, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If the tables are kept, i would suggest having a specific column for "References" - at the moment due to copy-pasting the same reference is often copied multiple times. Note for example this reference (which is about Oslo) has been copy-pasted to over 10 different rows incorrectly. Matthewmayer (talk) 10:35, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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