Urban primacy: the case of Hungary in the twentieth century
by Robert Venyige
One of the most important observations
on the urban system of a country is that in lot of cases the size of a city is
proportionate to its rank in the urban hierarchy. For example the second
largest city has a population that is half of the largest city’s population,
the third one has a population that is third of that of the largest one, and so
on. This is called the rank size rule or Zipf’s law of city size distribution. However,
in some cases the urban system does not follow this pattern, for instance the
size of largest city is too small or too big. The second case is called urban primacy, when the largest city of
a country represents disproportionately high share of the population and it has
an extremely high economic importance.
One measure of the superiority of
the largest city in a country is the so called primacy ratio. It is the ratio of the population of the largest
city to the sum of the population of a bigger set of cities, like the five
largest cities. (It is also possible to compare the size of the largest city to
the total urban population.) One of the well-known example of urban primacy is
the case of the United Kingdom, where London amounts to 70% of the population
of the five largest cities. However it appears in countries with very different
characteristics, for example France, Peru, Romania; but among the European
countries, Hungary has one of the highest primacy ratio; 0.71 in. The capital
of Hungary, Budapest indeed has a disproportionate size, its population (1.7
million in 2001) is approximately nine times larger than that of the second
largest city, Debrecen.
What are the possible explanations for this unequal urban system?
There are different theories that
may help us to understand the existence of this pattern in the case of Hungary.
One of the possible explanation is historical; the change in the size of
country after the World War I definitely affected its urban structure. The
population of the country – that was the part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy
at that time – was around 18 million, while after 1920 less than 8 million
people lived inside the new borders. If we look at the Austro-Hungarian
Monarchy, then Budapest was only the second largest city after Vienna in an
Empire with more than 52 million citizens. While the urban system of the
Monarchy was balanced (without primate city), if we consider only Hungary the
urbanization was so concentrated that we can find the same primacy ratio as later
on.
Furthermore political processes
can also affect the urban system of a country. Autocratic countries tend to
have larger primate cities due to the advantages their citizens can enjoy close
to the center of the regime. Hungary, during most of its history in the twentieth
century did not have democratic political system. The political regimes of the Interwar
period and Communist system of 1949-1989 are considered autocracy or limited democracy
and non-democratic, respectively. If we look at the primacy ratio of Budapest
through the twentieth century we see that it remained fairly stable during this
period, reaching its highest value around 1940 and the lowest in 2001. During
the interval period the concentration increased, while after 1949 it started to
decrease, but it is still high by international comparison. During the
Communist regime one cannot attribute the changes in the urban systems to
market forces. The state intensely got involved in the formation of the urban
system, for instance by forced industrialization, establishing new cities or its
partial restriction on labor mobility.
An economic explanation suggests
that open countries (in terms of international trade) tend to have smaller
primate cities. While Hungary considered
open in terms of its exports to GDP ratio, it does not necessary mean that it
should have a more even urban population distribution. First, there is a high
persistence in the urban structure of a country and it can change only
gradually. In historical term, the economy of Hungary was closed under the 40
years of the Communist regime, even if in the last 20 years it has become an
open economy. Second, if the primate city has a disproportionately better
access to the export market (through for example higher accessibility, airport
or highways) then an increase of the importance of trade can even aggravate the
uneven structure. Still, as an effect of international trade, one can expect that
the cities in the Western part of Hungary, which are closer to its main export
partners may grow faster in the future compared to other cities in the country.
However one have to take into
account that the definition of city is not straightforward and administrative
borders can change, cities can merge or split. It is also misleading if we consider
only the administrative boundaries of the city. As suburbanizatio has become
more pronounced one should take into account its effect as well. While the
population of Budapest itself is around 1.7 million, the size of its
agglomeration is 2.4 million. The status of the capital as the primate city in
this case is even more obvious (the primacy ratio is around 0.74), because
suburbanization and the agglomeration processes are more advanced around the
capital.
Source: Hungarian Statistical
Office, KSH
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