Decentralised Countries with main city >30% of national GDP (employment, live)
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For me the threshold for a decentralised country are France and the UK. True they're borderline centralised as both Paris and London contribute about 30% to national GDP, however there are still several other poles of industry and development such as Lyon, Toulouse-Bordeaux, Strasbourg and the French riviera in France and Manchester-Liverpool, Scotland, the Midlands, Yorkshire, Newcastle and the West country in the UK.
Another reference is Russia, which although it has 2 main cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, outside of this we have arguable more of an imbalance than even France and the UK with one main city.
France and the UK can be said to be borderline centralised, what are the countries that are more decentralised than these point of references? And which countries are truly decentralised?
Moscow's GRP (Gross Regional Product) was $260,000,000,000 in 2016 and Russia's total GRP was $1,259,100,000,000 which means that Moscow accounts for 20.65%. If you also include Moscow oblast which has a GRP of $64,800,000,000 then Moscow accounts for 25.80% of Russia's GRP.
New York's (metro area) nominal GDP in 2017 was $1,735,100,000 while the US's was $19,390,600,000 which means that metro New York accounts for 8.9% of the countries GDP.
Germany is the world's most decentralised country, alongside with China, India and the US. What makes Germany even more different and special than China, India and the US is, that its capital accounts for less of the nation's GDP than as for the population.
Berlin accounts for only 4,2% of Germany's GDP and 4,3% of Germany's total population and the urban area of Berlin accounts for 5% of it. Meanwhile, the second-largest city Hamburg accounts for 3,6% of Germany's GDP, while Munich accounts for 3,4% and the Hamborg and Munich urban areas account for about, each, 4-5% of Germany's total GDP. So, is there a country in the world that is even below 4,2/5%, excluding India and China?
Although Canada is also decentralised, I wouldn't call it very decentralized because only a few of its largest urban centers account already for a very large percentage of its total GDP.
You have an incredibly, extremely low threshold for a decentralised country.
France and the UK are not borderline centralised, they are prime examples for being hyper-centralised. Of all countries with at least 20 million inhabitants in the western world, France and the UK are the most centralized.
There are worlds between Paris and the 2nd most important French city, the same for the UK. The cities and regions you mentioned... Scotland, Strasbourg, wow what a surprise that there are other cities and even regions in the UK and France - that must be exclusive for them. Guess what, every country in the world with more than 10 million inhbaitants has other cities and regions within it!
That doesn't change the fact that they are significantly much less important than London and Paris, and totally overshadowed by their capitals.
French and British cities other than London and Paris just play the fifth fiddle.
Grand Paris has 19% of France's population, but 29% of its GDP. Similar with the UK. The rest is far, far away from even being remotely close.
France is a bit luckier than the UK, because:
- it has very popular tourist destinations on the Côte d'Azur and elsewhere, the UK has nothing comparable besides London - France has 82 million international tourists each year, the UK only 36 million, and most of these 36 million come to London... So France is more than twice as popular than the UK in tourism.
- Some of France's cities, Lyon, Lille and Strasbourg are closer or within CORE EUROPE (CORE EUROPE IS THE AREA BETWEEN BELGIUM AND SWITZERLAND) than Paris, which gives them a geographic advantage, while in the UK, London is the cloest major city to CORE EUROPE, which is a geographic disadvantage for all other British cities.
Nevertheless, Paris, c'est la France - the political system of France is highly centralised.
Paris and London are both parasite capitals that are big at the expense of their other cities:
"However, London’s strong performance was not matched by other British cities. The report rated six German cities against six UK cities in terms of output and employment growth and found that London “was conspicuous” as the only British city to rise on both measures in the past five years. “The performance of Berlin, Munich and Hamburg in particular has far exceeded that found anywhere in the UK,” it said, adding that Europe depended on the success of well-networked, “middleweight” cities for a substantial part of its global trade." https://www.ft.com/content/3c1624a8-...0-00144feabdc0
And I disagree with your statement about Russia, that outside of it there is more imbalance than in France and the UK. Certainly not. Russia has 14 cities with over 1 million inhabitants, while the UK has only two. France has very narrow city limits..only 1 city above 1 million inhbaitants. If we adjust it to Russian size, France would have 2-3 cities with at least 1 million inhabitants. Still much less than Russia.
Does the UK have a city like Sochi?
There is Yekaterinburg in Russia, the industrial centers around Togliatti and Rostov...The difference between London-other cities/Paris-other cities is definitely not smaller than between Moscow and Russia's third, fourth, fifth, etc. largest cities. Russia is more decentralized than France and the UK.
^^
Although I agree with much of what you have written above you're slightly out on your analysis of the UK.
First of all the UK has 3 cities proper with over 1 million people, politically defined city limits mean little. If that were the case Paris would have just 2.2 million people - this is obviously not true.
The Manchester urban area has 2.5 million people with its metro area at 2.8, when you combine it with the adjacent Liverpool metro area, we're talking about a twin city population of 5 million people in equal distance as Montreal-Saint Jerome. Add nearby Leeds and Sheffield and we're talking about a North-western powerhouse of nearly 9 million people. People often forget how close these cities actually are and with better governmental policies could serve as a substantial counterweight to London.
As for Met areas, the UK actually has 12 met areas with over 1 million inhabitants, France has 7. Russia with a population of nearly 150 million people and a landmass its size doesn't rank too well in my opinion with France and the UK.
What do you mean by if the UK has a city like Sochi? Sochi is a resort city with a privileged natural location, in a traditional sense of what a city is, there are many French and UK cities that rank above it.
Also a slight correction on tourism, as of 2017 the UK received 39.2 million not 36 million tourists.
Finally, although I agree that the UK and France are centralised, I would argue that they're not hyper-centralised in the global context. For example Manila contributes 36% to the GDP of the Philippines, Helsinki 39% to Finland, Istanbul 40% to Turkey, Santiago and Bangkok 44% each to Chile and Thailand respectively, Lima holds a whopping 52% of Peru's GDP and Panama (which is actually bigger than Ireland) has a colossal 70% of its GDP just in Panama city.
When we talk about regional concentration it gets much worse like in Chile where it's 2 main cities Santiago and Valparaiso are less than San Francisco-Sacramento in distance and together represent over half of the nation's economy.
I agree that Germany is perhaps the most decentralised country but then again this has to do with the fact that its a newly formed country less than 150 years old, not to mention it was split until the fall of the Berlin wall so its bound to have its different poles of development from before unification. Same with Italy.
Last edited by Pueblofuerte; 08-29-2018 at 08:34 AM..
I am sure there would be loads, even sydney sits at about 25% of national GDP.
Well, I think most would be in agreement that Australia can be considered a relatively decentralised country. Although Sydney and Melbourne are well out in front, Perth's location in western Australia and the fact that its the nation's 4th metropolis, as well as having the governmental seat in Canberra gives strength to the decentralised argument.
^^
As for Met areas, the UK actually has 12 met areas with over 1 million inhabitants, France has 7. Russia with a population of nearly 150 million people and a landmass its size doesn't rank too well in my opinion with France and the UK.
The land mass of Russia is exactly the reason why Russia doesn't have a lot of major cities, the population is too thinly spread out for having many large metropolises, instead Russia has a large amount of big towns, and industrial ones I may add.
Russia: 146,880,432 (*with Crimea)
> 2 million cities: 17,662,243 (12%)
1- 2 million cities: 15,526,125 (11%)
0.5-1 million cities: 13,515,719 (9%)
United Kingdom: 66,040,229
> 2 million urban areas: 14,781,791 (22%)
1-2 million urban areas: 2,987,077 (5%)
0.5-1 million urban areas: 5,632,002 (9%)
France: 67,186,638
> 2 million urban areas: 14,481,654 (22%)
1-2 million urban areas: 6,275,354 (9%)
0.5-1 million urban areas: 6,393,219 (10%)
And this isn't even an apples to apples comparison since Russia doesn't keep track of urban areas, however Russian city limits are large and probably contain about 90% of the population.
The land mass of Russia is exactly the reason why Russia doesn't have a lot of major cities, the population is too thinly spread out for having many large metropolises, instead Russia has a large amount of big towns, and industrial ones I may add.
True, Russia is a large landmass unto its own, only real slight equivalents in the world are Brazil and maybe the USA. However, I still consider both Brazil and the US as more decentralised than Russia.
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I totally Agree that Russia is a bit too centralized around Moscow, I was just stating why Moscow and St. Petersburg are the only metropolises in Russia.
I think a good exercise would be to see lower ranked cities/towns of different nations and compare them relative to said country's population and development. For example I would like to see...
- The 30th ranked city for nations with 100million+ people
- The 20th ranked city for nations with 50million-100million people
- The 15th ranked city for nations with 10million - 50 million people
- The 10th ranked city for nations with <10million people
I'll begin with Colombia which hasn't yet reached 50 million people (although will likely soon with the influx of Venezuelan migrants), however I'll still showcase the 20th ranked city instead of the 15th.
Colombia's 20th city Tunja
Population (2017): 195.496
GDP nominal (2017): $US 928.3million
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