Why isn’t New York City the capital of New York?
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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.
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