Using a new set of population statistics for pre-war urban Southeast Asia, this section, after a
brief discussion of data, constructs rank-size distributions and transition matrices to analyse
urban development beyond Southeast Asia’s gateway cities.4 The production characteristics of
staples heavily influenced the way in which the frontier ‘filled in’ as new areas were settled, and
therefore helped to shape patterns of urbanisation. In Burma, Thailand and Cochinchina, rice
did little to fill in the frontier and promote urban growth outside gateway cities. By contrast, in
Malaya, finance and marketing arrangements associated with rubber promoted an expanding and
increasingly interconnected urban system.