The Dictionary of Human Geography

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declining both absolutely and relatively as

shops and offices move to more accessible

suburban locations (cf.edge city;retailing;

sprawl). rj

Suggested reading

Carter (1995); Murphy (1972).

central place theory A theoretical statement

of the size and distribution of settlements

within anurban systemin which marketing –

especiallyretailingof goods and services – is

the predominant urban function. The theory

assumes that both customers and retailers are

utility-maximizers, making it anormative

statement against which actual patterns can

be compared.

Of the two separate central place theories

developed, Christaller’s (1933) has been most

influential. It was based on two concepts:the

range of a good– the maximum distance that

people will travel to buy it; andthe threshold for

a good– the minimum volume of sales neces-

sary for a viable establishment selling that

good (or a bundle of linked goods, such as

groceries). In order to maximize their utilities,

retailers locate establishments to be as near

their customers as possible and customers visit

the nearest available centre: in this way, expend-

iture ontransport costsis minimized and

spending on goods and services maximized.

On a uniform plane with a uniformly dis-

tributed population, Christaller showed that

application of these two concepts produced a

hexagonalnetworkof central places housing

the establishments, organized in a hierarchy

whose number of levels reflected the number

of goods/services with similar range and

threshold values (he identified seven). Each

was centrally located within itshinterland,

with those at the hierarchy’s lowest level hav-

ing the smallest number of establishments and

serving the smallest hinterlands, and thus

most widely distributed. The ways in which

smaller settlements nested within the hinter-

lands of larger ones depended on a further set

of principles. Christaller identified three (as

shown in the figure). Themarketing principle

(k¼3: a in the figure) minimizes the number

of settlements so that each is at the meeting-

point of three hexagonal hinterlands for

centres at the next hierarchical level up: the

number of centres in each order is 1, 2, 6, 18,

54, 162 and 486. According to thetransport

principle(k¼4: b in the figure) the goal is to

minimize the length of roads joining adjacent

places. Each settlement is located centrally

on the boundary line between the hexagonal

hinterlands of two places in the next highest

order hierarchy, and the number of centres is

in the ratio 1, 2, 8, 32, 128, 512 and 2,048.

Finally, theadministrative principle(k¼7: c in

the diagram) has each lower-order settlement

and its hinterland nested exclusively within the

hinterland of a single settlement in the next

highest order, producing a much larger num-

ber of places in the ratio 1, 6, 42, 294, 2,058,

14,406 and 100,842.

Lo ̈sch’s (1940) model was much less restrict-

ive than Christaller’s. Rather than bunch all

functions into seven ‘orders’ he treated each as

having a separate range, threshold and hex-

agonal hinterland. Where feasible, functions

were clustered into settlements but all central

places with certain functions in them need not –

asinChristaller’sscheme–alsocontain all ofthe

functions with smaller ranges and thresholds.

This produced a much wider range of settle-

ments in terms of size and complexity of busi-

ness profiles: whereas Christaller’s theory

produced a stepped hierarchical urban system,

Lo ̈sch’s was consistent with a more continuous

distribution of urban sizes.

Central place theory was a major stimulus to

work in the early years of geography’squanti-

tative revolution: it was described by Bunge

(1968, p. 133) as ‘geography’s finest intellec-

tual product’. Christaller’s work, in particular,

was the basis of much research into the size

and spacing of settlements and into consumer

behaviour (both inter- and intra-urban), and

also as the basis for planning settlement pat-

terns – not only in the anodyne cases of new

settlements in the Dutch polders and the dis-

tribution of new shopping centres in cities, but

also in the violent resettlement of Eastern

Europe as part of the Naziholocaust.

With greater mobility and customer choice

available in many, more developed, societies,

theunderlyingassumptionsare increasingly

irrelevant and the theory remains more as an

exemplar of modelling during that period

of geography’s history than as aparadigmfor

understanding contemporary settlement pat-

terns, although it is one of the theories ‘redis-

covered’ in thenew economic geography.

(See alsoperiodic market systems.) rj

Suggested reading

Beavon (1977); Berry and Parr (1988); Fujita,

Krugman and Venables (1999).

centrifugal and centripetal forces Terms

adapted from physics by C.C. Colby (1932)

to describe two counteracting forces generat-

ing intra-urban land-use changes. Centrifugal

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_C Final Proof page 76 31.3.2009 9:45pm

CENTRAL PLACE THEORY