According to the Rank-Size Rule, a country with a primate city is characterized by?

• A. The largest city being disproportionately larger than the others
• B. All cities having roughly equal populations
• C. The second largest city being larger than the largest
• D. City sizes declining in a simple exponential pattern

Answer: (A)

The idea being tested is how city sizes typically fall off as you move down the urban ranking. The Rank-Size Rule describes a pattern where the largest city is related to the others by a relatively smooth, inverse relationship, so a primate city stands out as much larger than all the rest. The best match is that the largest city is disproportionately larger than the others, which captures this outlier effect. The other descriptions don’t fit: equal-sized cities would eliminate dominance, a second-largest city larger than the largest would contradict the ranking, and a simple exponential decline isn’t how the Rank-Size distribution is described (it’s more of an inverse, power-law pattern).