Purely geographic major cities?

Vuu

Banned
You probably have heard of the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, who classify cities according to their "power" in the global economy.

It's a relatively good way to see which areas will tend to always develop better that the surrounding area. However, such things can be majorly influenced by people - politics, reducing cost of doing business etc etc.

What I'm looking to find out is - when such "subjective" factors are ruled out, which cities would become dominant? You know, like London, New York, Hong Kong etc...

 
You probably have heard of the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, who classify cities according to their "power" in the global economy.

It's a relatively good way to see which areas will tend to always develop better that the surrounding area. However, such things can be majorly influenced by people - politics, reducing cost of doing business etc etc.

What I'm looking to find out is - when such "subjective" factors are ruled out, which cities would become dominant? You know, like London, New York, Hong Kong etc...
So natural harbours and good positions in trade routes? Also depending of howcearly you want to look at it most major cities today become so by being well connected (likely by rivers) being around good enough land to create good population pressure for countryside to city migration and to sustain a big city with profit. That of course discounting political factors.
 
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@Vuu To understand this, perhaps it's worth looking into some of the earliest cities. It's difficult to pinpoint exactly which city is the oldest in human history, due to how you classify what counts as a city.

Jericho has evidence of settlement dating back to 10,000 BCE. During the Younger Dryas period of cold and drought, permanent habitation of any one location was impossible. However, the Ein es-Sultan spring at what would become Jericho was a popular camping ground for Natufian hunter-gatherer groups, who left a scattering of crescent-shaped microlith tools behind them. Around 9600 BCE, the droughts and cold of the Younger Dryas stadial had come to an end, making it possible for Natufian groups to extend the duration of their stay, eventually leading to year-round habitation and permanent settlement.

Çatalhöyük was a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from approximately 7500 BC to 5700 BC, and flourished around 7000 BC. It has been considered one of the earliest examples of a permanently-inhabited settlement that was lived in all year round.

Eridu, close to Uruk, was considered the first city in the world by the Sumerians. Eridu appears to be the earliest settlement in the region, founded c. 5400 BC, close to the Persian Gulf near the mouth of the Euphrates River. The earliest village settlement (c. 5000 BC) had grown into a substantial city of mudbrick and reed houses by c. 2900 BC, covering 8–10 ha (20–25 acres).

One can note that due to its geographical location, the fertile crescent combined an unusually high abundance and diversity of climates, flora and fauna. At the convergence of Africa, Europe and Asia, and with scenery ranging from snow-capped mountains, forests, to fertile river valleys, semi-arid scrubland and harsh desert, it was perfect. Plants and animals from all directions mixed and converged here, including all the species vital for domestication. It was a natural place for the first cities to emerge.
 
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London is pretty much guaranteed to be the location of the dominant city in Britain, because it's the lowest crossing point of the largest river on the island. Montréal, as the highest navigable point on the St. Lawrence is guaranteed to be important, as is Quebec City as the highest sea port along the St Lawrence. New Orleans sits at the mouth of the largest river in North America, practically guaranteeing a major city. Cairo sits near the point at which the Nile fans out into its delta, a position too strategically valuable not to develop into a major city. Karachi is at the mouth of the Indus, while Shanghai sits at the mouth of the Yangtse, Buenos Aries at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata and Jakarta at the mouth of the Ciliwung. Rivers, particulrly the mouths and lowest crossing points of major navigable rivers, and the highst navigable points of the same, are prime locations for cities.
Especially good natural harbours also tend to develop major cities, provided they have a good supply of water and food. See Tokyo, boosted by the fertile Kanto plain, Sydney, Melbourne, Carthage/Tunis, New York, San Fransisco, Vancouver, etc.
Above all else, if the geography of an area will naturally funnel trade through somewhere, that is where the major city will be.
 
I do not think you can get purely geographic major cities, those geographic points in their favor did benefit other concerns like military or trade. In the case of Tokyo yes it's near a harbor but without the circumstances that lead to the Tokugawa being given the Kanto region and Edo Castle, Edo and later Tokyo as a major city was not inevitable, the same with Alexandria.
 

xsampa

Banned
You probably have heard of the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, who classify cities according to their "power" in the global economy.

It's a relatively good way to see which areas will tend to always develop better that the surrounding area. However, such things can be majorly influenced by people - politics, reducing cost of doing business etc etc.

What I'm looking to find out is - when such "subjective" factors are ruled out, which cities would become dominant? You know, like London, New York, Hong Kong etc...
A lot of the cities mentioned in the Alpha (or globally dependent) section are natural points to development, so it seems that most economically influential cities are already determined by geography.
 
I do not think you can get purely geographic major cities, those geographic points in their favor did benefit other concerns like military or trade. In the case of Tokyo yes it's near a harbor but without the circumstances that lead to the Tokugawa being given the Kanto region and Edo Castle, Edo and later Tokyo as a major city was not inevitable, the same with Alexandria.
Good point. I'd say that Singapore is probably the most strategically valuable city in the world today, but its strategic value is due to the growth of global trade, the industrialization of East Asia and their subsequent use of Middle Eastern oil. Before these things, Singapore was relatively unimportant, or nonexistent. Same goes for Antwerp: while its deep harbors and its location on the North Sea and the Scheldt makes it an extremely valuable port, it was not important until the advent of trans-Atlantic trade, and is still not as large as it could be if it were controlled by a continental hegemon.

Yet another example is St. Louis, which would have been an extraordinarily valuable city if not for the development of railroads.
 
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Vuu

Banned
To clear things up, imagine this: an ASB is given a perfect, but empty copy of Earth - at which places would it be most effective to place administrative centers of large areas?
 
To clear things up, imagine this: an ASB is given a perfect, but empty copy of Earth - at which places would it be most effective to place administrative centers of large areas?
Depends on its tech level. At a pre industrial tech level, confluences and mouths of major rivers and commanding positions along straits, as sailing is the most efficient method of travel prior to the railroad.
Post industrial, flat land near the centre of landmasses with access to fresh water and limited risk of natural disaster.
 
A large port was guaranteed to emerge near the mouth of the Yangtze and Pearl Deltas, but before the Opium Wars, their dominant port cities were Ningbo and Canton respectively, and probably would have continued being so. Shanghai was a county town, while Hong Kong was a remote island. These two cities entirely owe their world-class existence to the Opium Wars.
 
For Denmark the dominance of a city along the Sound was pretty much given, whether this would end up Copenhagen, Elsinore or Malmö was not given.
 
Something that's worth noting is that while the geography of certain areas makes them appealing locations for cities and will tend to elevate any city built there, many of these locations, though of course not all, are big enough that you could build a significant city on multiple sites within the same area. For example, the Rio de la Plata could be dominated by any of a number of cities built on its shores, but the geography means one of them is likely to become a significant city. San Francisco Bay is another example where you could reasonably have built a city on any of a number of locations (Oakland on the eastern side of the bay comes to mind, but Vallejo or San Rafael on the northern bay could do it too) and benefited from the same geographical advantages. Apologies for the US-centric examples, but Puget Sound is another such case. The dominant city of the Sound, and by extension the Pacific Northwest, could have been at Tacoma or Everett instead of Seattle. Much as I might hate to admit it is a Seattlite, all of them share essentially the same geographic advantages with the differences coming more from chance and human action.

It's also important to remember that geography is not necessarily a static, immutable force. It can and does change on historically meaningful timescales. In Egypt, the most westerly branch of the Nile has long been the site of rich and powerful cities such as Thonis-Heracleion, Canopus, and Alexandria while their exact location and identity has shifted as the delta's coastline has moved and the local mouth of the Nile changed. While the same geographic logic has impeled each city, the cities are different due to the specific circumstances they existed in.

Finally, human activities have an important role in shaping which geographic advantages are more important than others. Sometimes primacy went to strong, defensible sites while in others access to maritime trade and resources was more important. On that last point, access to trade only drives the locations of cities if there are other centers with access and motivation or longer trade routes passing through. The great cities of Central Asia derived immense advantage from their location on the axis of trade between Asia and Europe, but that location only conveys a geographic location if there is trade moving through the region and people on either end of the route interested in buying what the other is selling.
 
Resources could make a difference. Petra, frex: IIRC, it depended on being a source of salt, which made it key to an incense trade route. (Or it was a major source of incense, I can't recall.:oops: )
 
Chicago is a guaranteed big city site after canal networks are a thing. It's the point to navigably link the St. Lawrence and Mississippi, as well as being on the southern tip of Lake Michigan.
 
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