Construct · 1 fields · 3 citations

central place theory: a standalone construct

One name. One construct. A landmark on the map.

● anchor · a standalone construct Nearest construct by meaningcentralitycompare the meanings
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centralplace theory1 CONSTRUCTCentral place theoryCHRISTALLER · SETTLEMENTS

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Economic Geography

A theory of the size, number, and spacing of settlements as service centers in a hierarchy

Walter Christaller's 1933 book Die zentralen Orte in Süddeutschland ("The Central Places in Southern Germany") introduced central place theory to explain the size, number, and spacing of towns and cities, treating each settlement as a central place that supplies goods and services to a surrounding market area. The theory rests on two ideas Christaller made precise: the threshold, the minimum demand needed to sustain a service, and the range, the greatest distance customers will travel for it, which together sort settlements into a nested hierarchy where a few large centers offer specialized services and many small ones offer only everyday goods. August Lösch's 1940 Die räumliche Ordnung der Wirtschaft ("The Spatial Order of the Economy") extended the framework into a more general economic model of market areas, and Brian Berry and William Garrison's 1958 study restated its logic in testable, quantitative terms. What makes central place theory a landmark is its scope: from a small set of assumptions about demand and travel cost it derives a regular geometric pattern of settlements, historically drawn as tessellated hexagonal market areas, that links the economics of retailing to the geography of the urban system.[1][2][3]

Unit
A named theory of settlement location, expressed as a hierarchy of central places and their market areas
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Assessed empirically by ranking settlements on the number and specialization of the services they offer and testing the predicted hierarchy and spacing against observed retail and population data

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Nearby constructs

threshold5 fields · 6 citationsjingle · one word, five constructshierarchy4 fields · 4 citationsjingle · one word, four constructscentrality4 fields · 7 citationsjingle · one word, four constructs

References

  1. Christaller, W. (1933). Die zentralen Orte in Süddeutschland. Gustav Fischer.
  2. Lösch, A. (1940). Die räumliche Ordnung der Wirtschaft. Gustav Fischer.
  3. Berry, B. J. L., & Garrison, W. L. (1958). The functional bases of the central place hierarchy. Economic Geography, 34(2), 145–154. https://doi.org/10.2307/142299

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