There are countries that capital city is eve a few times bigger from second biggest city. All main universities are located there and salaries are way higher. Is it a thing in your country?

33 comments

  1. Plenty of other cities have universities here, and while Amsterdam is the biggest city, other cities are not *that* far behind. Only thing I think Amsterdam really puts the other cities in the ground in is tourism. It is leading in a lot of other things but I don’t think the difference is substantial in comparison to Rotterdam or The Hague for example.

  2. Not really. Croatia is a centralized country, 1/5th of the population is located in Zagreb, as well as like 1/3rd of economy, but other regions are also very significant in many other ways, and most tourists never even go near Zagreb. In fact, if you asked the average European, their image of Croatia would be very different from a mid-sized Central European city that gets less sunshine per year than Seattle.

    There’s really no clear-cut way to divide Croatia in two in any meaningful way. Except “along the coast vs not along the coast”, but that’s irrelevant for anyone but tourists.

  3. No, not in Italy.

    Rome is the biggest city, the most famous one, and the most visited by tourists.

    But it doesn’t completely dominate the country.

  5. Well… Yea, kinda, but also not really. Ofc. I’m biased, since I’m from the 2nd city, Aarhus, and we do punch well above our weight, considering the size of the city, but it is just clear, that Copenhagen is more of a heavy hitter, at least when it comes to certain things. Not really universities, there are universities spread out across the country, and wages are only a _little_ higher in Copenhagen than the rest of the country, while the cost of living is much higher, but on certain issues, Copenhagen just is better, at reeling in the catch.

  6. Absolutely not. Regionalism is typical of italy. Maybe maybe rome and milan with their own roles, but the northeast is a thing of its own, the south also

  7. Yes, Moscow is big and financed much better than any other big city here per capita and ‘Moscow is not Russia’ phrase was coined for a reason.

  8. Culturally, very much so. In terms of available services or salaries, not so much. In fact, a handful of the Brussels’ municipalities are at the very bottom of the list when it comes to personal income, and the median income for the region as a whole is the lowest of the three regions.

  9. Yes and no. București is by far the biggest, being 6-7 times more populous than the next cities. It’s GDP per capita is highest in the country. Salaries are the highest and there are more job opportunities than anywhere else, obviously. But some other cities like Cluj have rival București in terms of salaries. Cluj also has arguably the best university in the country, so a large number of students go there as well, though in smaller numbers than those coming to Buc. The rents there are higher than in București for some reason, which is a meme on r/Romania.

    București is a different beast, but it’s not the promised land.

    While you can earn more in București, you can live decently in other cities like Cluj, Timișoara. Iași, Brașov, Craiova, Constanța, Oradea, Arad, Sibiu etc. because the prices for rent and expenses are somewhat proportional to the the salaries.

  10. A bit yes. “Portugal é Lisboa, o resto é paisagem” is a somewhat ironic common saying (Portugal is Lisbon, the rest is just landscape).

    Porto is the only other big-ish city in the country. Opportunities are far more concentrated in Lisbon in sectors such as the arts or business than elsewhere. People are more reserved as is typical of big cities and they give less of a damn about what others do for good and bad (like e.g. LGBT areas vs more loneliness).

  11. For the whole of the UK, yes. London is…well, London. For Scotland, not really, Edinburgh isn’t even the biggest city.

  12. There’s a common aphorism that states that Portugal is Lisbon and everything else is just landscape.

    It’s mainly a critical statement about the general political/economical tendency for centralism around the capital in Portugal.

    Porto is the second city, par excellence, and even still, it’s often snubbed on numerous matters.

  13. Not really, Stockholm isnt even double the size of Gothenburg. Stockholm university is a fucking joke, Uppsala University and Lund University are considered the main universities in Sweden just in general. Salaries are higher in general in all larger cities, dont think there is a huge difference between say Stockholm, Gothenburg or Uppsala.

  14. 10% of the countries population

    6 times as populated as the 2nd biggest city

    Has the biggest HDI out of all the sectors of the country (saw a map where it had Norway level HDI and the rest of the country had french guyana numbers, but it might have been inaccurate)

    The place that is most often in the news

    Pretty sure people are payed better there than Pretty much anywhere else

    At least there are some good universities in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th biggest cities

  15. Yes, but I’d also extend it to the commuter belt i.e. most of the South-East of England. London completely dominates both economically and politically.

  17. It’s not capital but istanbul is really a mega city. 20% of the population lives there. Although it’s pretty fascinating, you can’t really divide as İstanbul and the rest. There are many other important and developed cities, though non of them are on İstanbul level.

  18. Unfortunately yes. Prague is the center of almost everything, enjoys the highest standards of living and is 4 times larger than the next largest city in the country.

  19. In France there’s Paris and the ‘province’, so that is certainly the case. The country is heavily centralised so anything important in almost any area takes place in Paris. However quality of life is usually better in province than in Paris.

  20. Absolutely. The capital of Greece which is Athens accounts for almost half of the entire population of Greece. Every major thing in Greece is based in Athens. The rest of Greece is often overlooked in comparison to Athens. Attica region where Athens is located, accounts for almost 50% of Greece’s entire GDP. If you live anywhere in Greece outside Athens and maybe the second largest city Thessaloniki, you will often jokingly be considered a peasant. If you bombed just the city of Athens of all Greece, half of Greece’s population would vanish.I think it’s probably the most extreme out of all of Europe. Athens could well be its own country.

  21. No, we are very decentralized. Institutions, universities etc. are spread across the country and Berlin has only ~3.7 million inhabitants, while rest Germany has ~79.3 million.

    2nd largest city (Hamburg: 1.8 million) isn’t that far behind, if you compare the population gap to that of the largest and 2nd largest city of many other countries. Also Berlin is relatively poor, it’s said that financially we’d be better off without it.

    I guess if it would be blown up, Germany be like:

    “Tis nothing but a scratch!”

    Ok, probably an exaggeration. After all there’s art, history and knowledge to be lost, and the federal government.

  22. In a way yes. Vienna is distinctly different from the rest of the country. Its the only real major city, all others feel like small towns in comparison.That also causes life experience to differ quite a bit. It also is politically different as it is the only region with a constant unchallenged majority of the Social Democrats and other left parties.

    And generally Viennese are not loved by all the other regions. But then again there are regions like Tyrol that live by the informal motto of “Bischt a Tiroler, bischt a Mensch, bischt kaner bischt a Oaschloch” (If you are a Tyrolean you are a human. If you are not you’re an asshole”.

  23. Yeah London is pretty dominant. Apart from the university bit though, although it does have some top universities they’re very much spread across the whole UK.

  25. Definitely

    Greece has 10M.

    Athens Metro Area has 4M, around 40% of the population.

    I’d say there is a big cultural split as well. Athens has way more opportunities for entertainment (concerts, restaurants, cinemas, whatever you name it) than all the other cities, is also much more multicultural (a lot of tourists all year), is the seat of all sorts of power in Greece (political, judicial, media, business).

    It has its problems, but I’d take its social scene any day than any other city’s in Greece. Athens is the part of Greece (except from some touristy islands with a small population) which is more liberal and Westernized. The other cities…are much more Balkan in citizens mentality (especially Thessaloniki, the 2nd biggest).

  26. 25+ % of the Finnish population lives in the capital region (a tiny region compared to our total landmass). Also, that’s where the majority of office work is at. So the average salary is also much higher, but so is the cost of living.

    We do have several university cities like Turku, Tampere and Oulu, but they are by far smaller places than the capital region. The capital region has 1,4 million inhabitants, compared to 213k in Tampere, 177k in Turku, and 141k in Oulu.

  27. Yes, Dublin is more than 5 times the size of the other city in Ireland, and at this point has about a third of the entire population and well over half of the economic activity of the entire country.

  28. 100% for Estonia
    Tallinn has like 1/3rd the whole population but accounts for like 2/3rd the economy.

  29. Sort of. Yes, plenty of people from across the South Wales Valleys travel to work in Cardiff, and it’s definitely our largest city.

    Universities look to be about a 50-50 split, with Swansea, Wrexham, Bangor and Aberystwyth all having a university.

    Cardiff has two universities. It’s home to campuses for two more universities – which also have campuses in other towns and cities in Wales (University of South Wales, and the University of Wales Trinity Saint David). Both of which were founded due to mergers, as far as I can tell.

    There is also a definite feeling of North and Mid Wales being somewhat ignored politically by the Welsh Government – a lot of major developments are around Cardiff and the Valleys simply because of population density.

  31. Yes, Dublin dominates Ireland when it comes to population, economic activity, education and cost of living. It is starkly different from the rest of the country.

    Dublin has a population of 1.4 million people, compared to the next biggest city Cork which had about 200,000 people.

  32. As You didn`t described Poland than maybe it is worth to say something 😉 I`d say – not really. Warsaw is a largest city, but it is not a different world. In southern PL everything is centered around Wroclaw, Krakow and to lesser extent Katowice(Silesian metro area) – Warsaw is not considered ‘promised land’ here. These cities offer similar standard of living(though wages are slightly smaller), cultural life, quality of education, access to services etc. Poznan is also considered wealthy and well developed city having good universities and very decent salaries. I guess the real divide is on the line ‘Big Cities’ and their suburbs/ more remote towns villages. It is a really mental and financial gap – it is way harder to move up the social ladder if you`re from Eastern PL than if you`re from one of these ‘top’ cities mentioned above.

  33. Prague has the most universities etc. Has higher wages too. But the housing there is very very expensive. And i don’t like large cities, i prefer smaller towns, so i wouldn’t live there.

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