Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed
I don't think that's what is unique to the US. No other country in the world had as many large cities as the United States did by 1950. According to Demographia the US had 14 urban areas of 1 million or more in population by 1950. China, the country with the second largest number of major cities, only had 8.
Even today the US still has the second largest number of urban areas with 1 million or more inhabitants (39). China leads with 93 cities and India closely follows the US with 37. Besides the US, China, India, and Brazil are the only other countries in the world to have more 1 million person metros today than the US had in 1950.
It seems fairly impossible to say definitively that no other country had a significant reordering in their #5 - #20 largest urban populations for the simple fact that most other countries didn't document that far down. |
We don't need to be limited to 1 million people urban areas. A 300k urban area back in 1950 was a very important urban centre.
There's nothing like Atlanta and Birmingham both being major and similar sized urban centers in 1950 and now one 6x larger than the other. We don't have this anywhere outside the US. In no other country people move so often as in the US. It's not even close.
Australia, Canada and (White) South Africa are the most similar countries in terms of urban morphology and even though they had some "laggers" (Winnipeg, Adelaide, Port Elizabeth), there's only a very gradual change on urban hierarchy not a completely redrawing.
Or we can talk about Brazil or Soviet Union/Russia, other big/empty continental countries like the US, or Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, places that experienced decline of old industrial heartlands. Some cities grows a bit faster, other a bit slower, but that's it.
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