| Primate cities emerge, grow, and become dominant in the urban system as a result of a complex set of internal and external forces operating at different macro and micro levels. The strength of primacy, as indicated by the degree of population concentration in one or a few urban centers, has long been understood as being an important correlate of economic and social development. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the strength and direction of the relationship between dynamics of urban primacy and demographic and macro-economic fluctuations in Iran. Through an in-depth statistical analysis, I tested this relationship using aggregate indexes of 32 demographic and macro-economic variables over the period of 1956--2000, and found that the dynamics of urban population concentration in Iran is a function of the demographic and macro-economic fluctuations. The Pearson's correlation coefficient of 0.85 shows that in Iran, fluctuations of demographic variables, such as the number of active population, birth rate, dependency ratio, number of women in the workforce, and literacy, result in greater volatility of population concentration in the primate city of Tehran. In case of macro-economic variables, the correlation coefficient is 0.79, indicating that volatility of population centrality tends to exacerbate as macro-economic variables, such as GDP, income distribution, budget deficit, expenditures on economic affairs, investment in public sector, and unemployment become unstable. Moreover, the direction of the examined associations is positive, meaning that an increase in population concentration is associated with greater fluctuations in demographic and macro-economic situations. By showing the importance of these factors in explaining the dynamics of urban primacy, this research contributes to the argument that the forces affecting dynamics of urban primacy are multi-dimensional, and go much beyond the boundaries of the primate cities. For instance, in the case of Iran, it is not the collective advantages of Tehran that generate further spatial polarization and imbalance within the urban hierarchy, rather it is the social, economic and political forces of the settlement system and the country as a whole that affect primacy. This emphasizes the fundamental role of state and regional institutions for managing urban population concentration processes. |
