The Urban Systems of China and the United States

We analyze the urban hierarchies of China and the United States. We first review the emergence of Shanghai, and of New York City, as the Super Metropolises in the two countries. The histories of both Shanghai and New York City indicate that the dominance of a city is not solely based on having a large population, but more importantly on performing various key functions. Next, using concepts and theories of human ecology and demography, we analyze data from the 2011 China City Statistical Yearbook and from the 2007 Economic Census of the U.S. to configure quantitatively the urban systems of the two countries. The composite indexes of metropolitan dominance are generated for each of China’s 171 large cities and for each of the 67 large cities in the United States (a large city has a population of 750K or more). We next develop a hierarchical classification of nine categories of metropolitan dominance to delineate quantitatively the hierarchies of China and United States. Further, we analyze the similarities and dissimilarities in the urban systems of the two countries. We conclude that it is the dominance of the city, rather than its population size, that determines its position in the urban hierarchy.