Central Place Theory
Central Place Theory
Central Place Theory
Supplemental Notes
What is it?
Central Place Theory is a model that helps explain central places in the urban hierarchy. The services and central market varies according to their relative size. It consist of a Range and Threshold. Threshold is the minimum number of people needed to support a product. Range is the distance that people willing to travel for a product or an activity.
Assumptions
It is based on four assumptions: 1. The surface of the ideal region would have to be flat and have no barriers. 2. Soil fertility would have to be the same everywhere. 3. Christaller assumed an even distribution of population and purchasing power and a uniform transportation network that permitted direct travel from each settlement to the other. 4. He also assumed that a constant maximum distance or range of any goods or service produced in a town would prevail in all directions from that urban center.
Settlement Pattern
The shaded in area A showed
the unserved areas. The Purple area in B indicates places where the condition of Monopoly would not be fulfilled. The hexagon pattern is the best pattern for the Central Place Theory it completely fills the area without overlapping each other.
A picture examples
Picture 1 represents the central market within the city. Picture 2 shows the direction in which where did the threshold and the range takes place. The threshold and range determines where lower and upper limits of goods and services can be found.
Walter Christaller
Walter Christaller was born on 1893 and died in 1969. He was a German Geographer, whose favorite toy was an atlas when he was a kid. In 1933 he published The Central Places in Southern Germany.
Centrality
The importance of a place not only producing goods, but also it offering goods to peoples. The centrality of a place also refers to structural attribute of nodes in a network. The central city provides central goods and services only within the the region it serves.
Marketing Principles
There are three settlement use for this model is triangle, square, and hexagon. The hexagon settlement bests approximates a circle settlement. The B-level area indicates 1/3 of the A-level area. The A-level area is three times larger than the B- level area.
Transport Principle
The settlements are strongly influenced by the Transportation systems. The roads are used to connect the larger settlements and smaller settlements are built along the routes. The Total Network length is minimum and the connectivity is maximum.
Administrative Principle
All the six lower order centers are subordinate to the Higher order centers which dominates the equivalent pattern of the market area at the next lowest area. Its goals is to provide a hierarchy of control, meaning the lower levels must be control by the higher level. According to the Administrative Principle, known as the K=7 system, settlements are nested into seven.
Related terms
The Sphere of influence is the area under the influence of the Central Place. Settlements that provide low order services are called Low order settlement, and settlements that provide high order services are called High order settlements. The minimum population size required to profitably maintain a service is the threshold population.
Continue
Only the market areas matters for this theory not the size of the city. It is follow by the following orders: 1. First order includes largest threshold and range. Second and third order follows after first order.
Christaller's Central Place Theory is primarily used to by cultural geographers to rank cities based upon their population size and their market pull.
Relax Assumptions
Population income variation- wealthy versus the nonwealthy areas, wealthy areas do not need as large of a threshold. Variation in transport surface Consumer behavior and or Individual preferences. Profits
Continued
3. Households, Rural markets, are not evenly distributed. 4. Non economic factors may be important in various things but it is not evenly distributed. 5. Competitive practices may lead to freight absorption and phantom freight in certain region.
Conclusion
Christaller starts his theory at the top of the hierarchy. He recognized a triangular settlements and a hexagonal market areas. Christallers main focus was to look for a relationship between the size, the number and the geographic distribution of cities.
Continued
The Range will probably increase as the population increases. The Central Place is most frequently located at the geographical periphery of a region. Its location is determined by applying the laws of marketing, the laws of distribution, and the laws of traffic.
Continue..
Christaller uses the overlapping areas to create and find the best settlement for his theory.
A Central Place Theory is a theory that explains patterns of urbanization and establishment of market area for central goods and services. The purpose of the Central Place Theory is to show that each particular settlement is held in place within a system of cities, and it suggests that the development of each city is affected by its position in the system.
Bibliography
http://www.uwec.edu/bfoust/155/G155_RS3/sld002.htm