AP Syllabus focus:
‘Increasingly, the largest and fastest-growing cities are located in countries in the periphery and semiperiphery.’
Large cities in the periphery and semiperiphery have expanded rapidly due to economic change, demographic momentum, and global integration, reshaping global urban patterns and development trajectories.
Why Many Large Cities Are in the Periphery and Semiperiphery
Global Shifts in Urbanization
Many of the world’s most rapidly growing urban areas are located in periphery and semiperiphery countries, categories derived from world-systems theory, which classifies countries based on their position in the global economy.
This diagram illustrates a typical core–semiperiphery–periphery structure used in world-systems theory. The central core represents highly developed, innovation-intensive economies, while the outer rings represent less developed, more resource- and labor-dependent regions. Although the diagram is abstract rather than a map, it clearly shows the hierarchical relationships shaping where large cities and investment concentrate. Source.
These locations experience fast-paced demographic and economic changes that create conditions ripe for urban expansion.
Periphery: Countries with lower levels of industrialization, limited capital accumulation, and historical dependence on global core powers.
A major driver of large-city emergence in these regions is rapid urbanization, which is the increasing concentration of population into cities rather than rural areas.
Demographic Momentum and Natural Increase
A crucial factor behind the rise of large cities in the periphery and semiperiphery is natural increase, or growth due to high birth rates relative to death rates. Many countries in these categories have youthful populations, which create sustained population expansion.
Natural Increase: The population growth resulting from the difference between birth rates and death rates within a region.
These demographic patterns fuel city growth even when migration is not the primary contributor.
Rural-to-Urban Migration
Another major contributor is extensive rural-to-urban migration, a process where people leave rural areas in search of work, education, and improved living conditions in cities. Migrants often move because of both push factors—conditions that motivate departure—and pull factors—attractions drawing people to urban centers.
Common push factors include:
Limited rural employment opportunities
Environmental degradation and land fragmentation
Agricultural modernization reducing labor needs
Common pull factors include:
Availability of low-skill and service-sector jobs
Access to education and healthcare
Urban infrastructure and perceived opportunities
The combination of these forces helps explain why cities like Lagos, Dhaka, and Kinshasa have surged in size.
This world map shows the percentage of each country’s population living in urban areas and the locations of major urban agglomerations, with megacities of 10 million or more shown as large red circles. The clustering of megacities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America visually reinforces that rapid urban growth is concentrated in periphery and semiperiphery regions. The map includes additional detail on medium and large cities, which extends slightly beyond the AP syllabus but helps situate megacities within the global urban hierarchy. Source.
Economic Development and Global Integration
Economic restructuring has also accelerated the growth of large cities in these world regions. Many periphery and semiperiphery countries have shifted from primarily agrarian systems toward industrialization and service-sector expansion, both of which cluster in urban areas.
This process is linked to:
Foreign direct investment (FDI)
The rise of export-processing zones and manufacturing hubs
Integration into global production networks
Growth of informal-sector employment in rapidly expanding cities
These economic dynamics reshape city hierarchies by concentrating labor, capital, and infrastructure in a few large metropolitan centers.
Role of Informal Economy in Rapid Growth
In many of these cities, the informal economy, defined as economic activity that is unregulated and untaxed by the state, plays a central role in absorbing new workers. It emerges because formal-sector job creation often lags behind demographic and migratory growth.
Informal Economy: Economic activities and employment that operate outside government regulation, taxation, and oversight.
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Inequalities Within Urban Growth
Large cities in the periphery and semiperiphery often exhibit stark inequalities in:
Housing quality and access
Infrastructure distribution
Environmental conditions
Access to transportation and services
These disparities reflect rapid growth that outpaces planning capacity. As a result, informal settlements, overcrowding, and deficient sanitation networks are common features.
However, when public investment in infrastructure, housing, and services fails to keep up with population growth, these cities frequently develop informal settlements, sometimes called slums or squatter areas.
This aerial view of Makoko in Lagos illustrates how rapid urban growth can outpace formal planning, with densely packed informal housing extending over the lagoon. The narrow waterways and irregular building patterns reflect limited access to infrastructure and insecure land tenure. Although the image includes contextual environmental detail, its primary features directly support understanding of informal settlements in periphery megacities. Source.
Primacy and Urban Concentration
Many countries in these categories develop primate cities, which are disproportionately large urban centers dominating national political and economic systems. Although primacy is covered elsewhere in the syllabus, it is important here because rapid urbanization in periphery and semiperiphery countries often concentrates growth into one dominant metropolis.
Primate City: A city that is more than twice as large as the next-largest city and serves as the political, economic, and cultural center of a country.
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Infrastructure Constraints
Many large cities in these world regions experience infrastructural strain. Rapid population growth creates gaps in:
Transportation networks
Water and sanitation systems
Energy supply
Waste management
These gaps reflect limited fiscal capacity and the speed of urban expansion. Despite these challenges, infrastructure investment often focuses on major cities due to their economic importance, reinforcing their continued growth.
Governance and Policy Influences
Government actions can also shape large-city emergence in the periphery and semiperiphery. Policies such as:
Trade liberalization
Development of special economic zones
Capital relocation or concentration
National investment in strategic cities
These measures attract migrants and industries to specific cities, accelerating their size and influence.
Global Patterns and Future Implications
The rapid expansion of cities in the periphery and semiperiphery reflects broader shifts in global demographics and economic geography. As urban populations grow, these cities increasingly shape regional and global urban systems, influencing consumption, labor markets, environmental change, and development planning.
FAQ
Urban growth in the periphery and semiperiphery tends to be faster and more uneven, driven by a combination of high natural increase, limited rural opportunities, and rapid economic change.
In core countries, growth is usually slower, dominated by suburbanisation or re-urbanisation, and supported by stronger planning systems.
Cities in the periphery and semiperiphery also experience a higher share of informal employment and informal housing as growth outpaces infrastructure investment.
Multinational corporations often locate operations in these regions to access cheaper labour, abundant land, and growing consumer markets.
Their investment stimulates:
Job creation in manufacturing and services
Infrastructure development around production zones
Expansion of transport networks
Growing economic activity then attracts additional migrants, accelerating city size and influence.
Colonial powers concentrated administration, trade, and transport infrastructure in select port or capital cities, creating early nodes of economic activity.
After independence, these cities retained advantages such as:
Established commercial networks
Transport links to global markets
Concentrated political power
These historical foundations positioned them to become today’s megacities as national populations and economies expanded.
Rapid urbanisation and investment often become concentrated in one dominant metropolitan area, resulting in an imbalance in national urban systems.
This pattern arises from:
Centralised government spending
Foreign investment favouring already established hubs
Weak regional planning frameworks
With limited support for smaller cities, migrants and businesses gravitate toward the primary city, reinforcing its rapid growth.
Many fast-growing cities are located in climatically favourable or resource-rich areas that historically supported dense populations.
Common environmental drivers include:
Major river basins facilitating trade and transport
Fertile agricultural hinterlands supporting labour supply
Coastal locations enhancing global connectivity
As national economies industrialise, these environmental advantages continue to attract people and investment, intensifying urban growth.
Practice Questions
Question 1 (1–3 marks)
Explain one reason why many of the world’s largest and fastest-growing cities are located in countries in the periphery or semiperiphery.
Question 1 (1–3 marks)
1 mark
• Identifies a valid reason (e.g., high natural increase, rapid rural-to-urban migration, economic restructuring).
2 marks
• Provides a clear explanation of how the reason leads to large-city growth (e.g., youthful populations driving sustained natural increase; migration driven by perceived job opportunities).
3 marks
• Offers a more developed explanation or includes a precise geographic element (e.g., industrialisation drawing labour into specific metropolitan centres; rural push factors from agricultural mechanisation increasing urban inflows).
Question 2 (4–6 marks)
Using specific geographic processes, explain how both economic change and demographic patterns contribute to the rapid growth of large cities in the periphery and semiperiphery. Refer to at least two distinct processes in your answer.
Question 2 (4–6 marks)
1–2 marks
• Identifies one or two relevant processes (e.g., industrialisation, foreign direct investment, informal sector expansion, high birth rates, rural-to-urban migration).
3–4 marks
• Clearly explains how these processes contribute to rapid urban growth in periphery and semiperiphery contexts (e.g., economic restructuring creating new manufacturing hubs; demographic momentum producing a growing labour force).
5–6 marks
• Provides well-developed explanations that integrate geographic concepts (e.g., linking migration flows to both push and pull factors, describing how global economic networks concentrate investment in certain cities, explaining how natural increase and migration combine to accelerate urban expansion).
• Shows clear understanding of why these processes are particularly strong in periphery and semiperiphery countries.
