The development of a whole complex of mutually complementary natural resources (iron ore, hydro-electric power, manganese, and more recently substantial agricultural resources) facilitated the establishment of a variety of heavy and processing industries and thereby made for a much greater impact on the region than would have been the case in a resource frontier where only one resource could be mobilized for export. 
 
 
 
A reduction in the high primacy of the latter city and the structuring of a more articulated urban system able to distribute development throughout the region will of course depend on the resource potential of the rest of the region and the size of the population envisaged for it.