CDS (I) 2024 General Knowledge · Question 48 of 120

Correct — D, 1, 2 and 3. All three statements describe the standard urban-geography meaning of a gateway city. Statement 1 gives the definition — a city whose physical position makes it the link between one country or region and others. Statement 2 gives the consequence: because it commands the point of entry and exit, its control reaches far beyond its own built-up area into the hinterland whose trade must pass through it. Statement 3 gives the historical fact: most gateway cities are ports, and in the colonised world a great many of them were also the administrative headquarters of the colonial power — Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Singapore, Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro all fit both halves of that description.

• (a)1 only — Accepts the definition but rejects the two features that follow from it. Control over a wide hinterland is not an extra claim; it is what 'gateway' means in practice.
• (b)1 and 2 only — Rejects statement 3, but the port-and-colonial-capital link is the best-documented part of the concept. India's own three colonial gateway cities — Bombay, Madras and Calcutta — were all ports and all Presidency capitals.
• (c)2 and 3 only — Rejects the definition itself while keeping its consequences, which cannot be right. Statement 1 is the textbook definition of a gateway city.

Urban geography classifies cities by the function they perform for the territory around them. A gateway city is one whose site controls a passage — a natural harbour, a river mouth, a mountain pass, a strait — so that goods, people and information entering or leaving a region must pass through it. That control gives the city an economic reach far larger than its own area, and it usually shows up as a port with a wide hinterland. In colonised regions the same sites were chosen by the imperial power as its administrative headquarters, so gateway status and colonial capital status frequently coincided, and many of those cities remain their country's largest even today.

This is a definitional item with no factual trap in it — the examiner is checking whether you have read the term rather than guessed at it. The reason a candidate hesitates is statement 2, whose phrasing ('exercises control over a large area', 'entry and exit rights and powers') sounds like a claim about political authority. Read it as economic and locational control, and it is simply a restatement of what a gateway does. India's colonial history makes statement 3 easy to verify: Bombay, Madras and Calcutta were founded or developed by the East India Company as ports, became the capitals of the three Presidencies, and grew into the country's gateway cities on the strength of both roles.

• A gateway city commands the entry and exit route between one region or country and others, so its influence extends over a large hinterland.
• Most gateway cities are ports, because sea routes historically carried the bulk of long-distance trade.
• In India, Bombay, Madras and Calcutta were both ports and the administrative capitals of the three Presidencies under colonial rule.
• Gateway function is one of several functional classifications of cities, alongside administrative, industrial, mining, religious and resort towns.

• Reading statement 2's 'entry and exit rights and powers' as a legal or constitutional claim rather than a description of locational control.
• Assuming a gateway city must be a national capital; the gateway role rests on the site, not on political rank.
• Confusing a gateway city with a primate city — the two often coincide in practice but are defined by different things.

Asked as a definitional three-statement code item on a single geography term — the safest kind, because every statement is a paraphrase of the same idea.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The gateway function of a city rests primarily on which one of the following?

  • (a)Its population size
  • (b)Its position controlling movement into and out of a region
  • (c)Its political status as a capital
  • (d)The size of its industrial workforce

  Answer(b) Its position controlling movement into and out of a region — the site, not the size or the political rank, defines a gateway.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The three Presidency towns of British India — Bombay, Madras and Calcutta — shared which two characteristics that made them gateway cities?

  • (a)Inland location and mining function
  • (b)Port function and colonial administrative headquarters
  • (c)Religious importance and pilgrimage traffic
  • (d)Hill-station climate and garrison function

  Answer(b) Port function and colonial administrative headquarters — each was a harbour and the seat of a Presidency government.