Why isn’t New York City the capital of New York?
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Questions about the US are generally better in r/askanamerican.
The largest cities are often not the capitals, for a number of reasons: large cities are often coastal due to importance of shipping back in the day, but capitals were often located more centrally within state due to travel times back before train/plane/car; having them separate was a way to balance power between dominant city and the rest of state, as well as reducing influence of wealthy/business over politicians.
It is something rather frequent to have your capital not be your biggest city, especially in region that developed more recently like in America and Africa.
When you place your capital, you tend to attract business and create economic opportunity there. You have people in government, usually government agency go there, you have all the staff and position needed to make the government work, you have other business that form around for building and services that the government need, etc. In the past it was a good thing to put your capital in your biggest city. That way you had control over an important economic and military centre, and having power close to you was a good way to let that power go to a rival.
But in our modern world that’s not really an issue. So a lot of countries, or administrative unit prefer to not choose the biggest city as their capital. A big reason is to spread the political and economic power and not concentrate it too much. The biggest city already have no problem creating jobs and economic industry and so it doesn’t need to add more by place the capital there too. In addition, the biggest city will have an easier job convincing people that they deserve stuff from the government. By putting your capital not in your biggest city you decentralise the power and it’s more equitable for the whole country or region.
But that depend on the people that end up choosing the capital, they don’t always think the same and some cities have too much history to not be the capital.
There is the concern that if a state’s largest city is also its capital, then the capital will cater to the interests of just that city rather than of the state as a whole.
Because Albany was an old city that provided better access to other parts of the state.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-New-York-City-not-the-capital-of-New-York-state
Because when the states (most states) were forming they didn’t want to make their biggest cities the capitol. That’s why Miami isn’t the capitol of FL and LA isn’t the capitol of CA…etc. there’s a few reasons why which are actually very easily google-able. Some include military strategy and in-state politics between cities.
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