This article explores the formation of the territorial divide in Nouvelle-Aquitaine over two centuries (1800-2015) and investigates an analysis of the whole regional urban system. This vast and contrasting region, with as many metropolitan assets as unattractive rural municipalities, faces challenges of equity and territorial cohesion. This article addresses two important theoretical issues. First, it calls into question the assumptions of stability and unique equilibrium of urban systems and considers those latter as complex systems structured by key processes that occur at distinct spatial (regional or subregional) scales. Equilibrium depicted at aggregate national scales through Zipf’s law and Gibrat’s law actually obscures variation observed in a multi-scale regional analysis (Bessey, 2002). Regional and subregional urban systems specificites have been ignored in the desire to fit with Zipf’s law (Garmestani et al., 2005). This article thus revisits these two theoretical principles of organization of urban systems by mobilizing them as methodological tools (parametric and non-parametric) allowing to describe over two centuries the growing inequalities, to grasp the evolution of the link between the size of municipalities and their growth as well as the importance of proximity to Bordeaux in growth dynamics. Next, the competitiveness and attractiveness logics (Bouba-Olga and Grossetti, 2018) are enhanced in the scientific literature in regional science at the expense of a in-depth understanding of territories and their specificities. This article therefore proposes to analyze the entire Neo-Aquitain urban system, to understand the growth trajectories of all the municipalities in the region and to detect the logics that have widened the current divide. This article also calls into question the spillover effects of a big city on its hinterland as well as the ability of policies enhancing attractivity to ensure the demographic, economic and social cohesion of the territories.