Many countries run their urban economies the same way: investment and opportunity concentrate in a handful of large cities, while mid-sized cities with real productive capacity contribute well below their potential. The result is a system under strain at the top and underperforming everywhere else.
A new World Bank report on unlocking state-level growth in Malaysia documents this story with evidence. Using two diagnostic tools — Zipf’s Law and an Economic Potential Index (EPI) — the report identifies specific mid-sized cities as places with real strategic assets that are not yet converting them into growth.
Zipf’s law: Reading an Urban System’s Health
Zipf’s Law offers a simple way to assess whether a country’s urban system is functioning as it should. In a balanced system, city sizes decline predictably by rank: the largest city is roughly twice the size of the second largest, three times the size of the third, and so on. When cities deviate from this pattern, it signals that population and investment are concentrating disproportionately in a few large centers, putting strain on infrastructure, pushing up living costs, and drawing resources away from the rest of the system.
Malaysia’s cities are moving further from this benchmark. Between 2010 and 2020, inequality in city sizes increased, driven by the rapid expansion of already-large urban areas. The country’s biggest cities kept growing; the rest of the system fell further behind.
READ MORE: https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/developmenttalk/malaysia-s-growth-is-leaving-cities-behind
