ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some of the important literature on secondary cities. It also considered functions of secondary cities and some concerns about national secondary city strategies. Besides size, growth and function, the international literature also considers locational aspects and locational interdependence of secondary cities. The proximity of secondary cities to larger cities is mentioned in the literature as a positive factor in urban growth through the facilitating of networking and agglomeration. Secondary city responses to globalisation differ broadly from those of larger cities. Secondary cities usually have less capacity for planning within the global context. Many are newcomers to the international context Bolay and Rabinovich observe that the cities they studied struggled to adapt to the pressures of globalisation. In many cases secondary city economies are linked to the international economy only by single industry. The basic assumption of Rodriquez-Pose and Fitjar is that the world is becoming 'spikier', with increasing agglomerations of economic activity in a few concentrated areas.
