antecedents, functions, and internal organization, regardless of theregionand
cultural environment in which the city had developed. Those cities in the contem-
porary era that had yet to undergo industrialization also indicated this structure,
according to Sjoberg. His urban model was constructed to be a partial refutation
of the Burgess model of urban morphology put forth in 1925. Burgess had con-
tended that cities are composed of circular zones around a central core. Sjoberg
criticized the Burgess model on the basis that it applied only to the era of mass
capitalistic production, i.e., the industrial age, and held that before the industrial
revolution cities of the feudal period and before shared the same fundamental
spatial plan, based primarily on social and political stratification.
The Sjoberg model offered an urban structure that emanated from the social
class hierarchy of urban residents. The spatial arrangement of the city was directly
related to the political power relationships between these groups. Sjoberg wrote
that in general, there were three classes who lived in pre-industrial urban spaces.
The most influential of the classes was an elite social stratum, comprised mostly
of religious authorities, military leaders that of course held power through the
threat of arms, and the political rulers. This class occupied the center of the city.
Around this core, residential neighborhoods holding the lower class formed. Mer-
chants and those engaged in some trade lived in this part of the city, with poorer
classes living the furthest away from the center. This meant that commercial activ-
ities were not concentrated at the city center but further away, a spatial feature that
distinguished the pre-industrial city from its successor in the industrial age. A third
class, slaves and menial workers, lived interspersed with the poorer sections of the
lower class, or at the very margin of the urban area. Many contemporary urban
geographers find the pre-industrial city model overly generalized and simplistic,
especially its questionable position of completely divorcing economic from politi-
cal power. In addition, some scholars believe that the model suffers from dubious
assumptions, such as the contention that levels of technological expertise
were similar across the geographical and temporal spectrum of pre-industrial
urban centers.
Primate City
A primate city is one that dominates the urbanlandscapeof a country in terms of
demographic weight and economic function. The term stems from an article pub-
lished in theGeographical Reviewby Mark Jefferson in 1939. Jefferson described
what he called the “law” of the primate city in countries where the largest city held
a dominant positionover the second- and third-largest cities by a constant ratio.
Primate City 267