ABSTRACT
The study of metropolis and region has a long tradition in human ecological and urban sociological studies of “developed” countries, especially the United States. An intersection of interests in urban ecology and the study of developing areas leads almost inevitably to a consideration of the primate city concept. This chapter presents the extent to which policies implemented by primate city decision-makers parasitically retard national development. It describes why a pertinent analysis of the relationship between urban primacy and national development must complement the more “traditional” analysis of quantitative demographic, ecological, and socio-economic independent variables with a focus on decision-making, policy-implementation, and their economic impacts. Therefore, a discussion of ecological theory, emphasizing its rarely-perceived political-economic implications, follows. The chapter suggests that any macrosociological theory of social organization in its broadest sense must incorporate at certain key junctures insights which are decidedly “ecological”.
