Secondary cities affect urban development for developed and developing countries, as they consider transitional zones for various activities between the rural settlements and primate cities. Therefore, the world has struggled to set criteria for defining the secondary cities understanding their intermediate role within the urban system. On the other side, the local experience has followed other criteria for determining the secondary Egyptian cities, which are entirely different from the global trend and may not achieve balanced development. Accordingly, this research attempts to assess the local definition of secondary cities by investigating to what extent they differ from the global terminology and how this difference affects them. The study firstly indicates the difference in defining the secondary cities from an international and national perspective. Subsequently, it discusses the effect of the local definition on achieving a physical hierarchy between cities. Then, it compares the ability of primate and secondary cities to achieve efficient resources mobilization equal to their population size and available opportunities; consequently, this comparison adds another layer of assessing the local definition. Finally, the research suggests a concept to redefine the secondary Egyptian cities based on the global defining to help the secondary Egyptian cities attain balanced development.