Central Place Theory

A theory aimed at describing and explaining urban settlement patterns. Central Place Theory provides one of the most influential philosophical frameworks to emerge from the study of urban geography in the 20th century, and continues to be debated and refined. The foundations of the theory were first laid out in the doctoral dissertation ofWalther Christaller in the 1930s. Christaller had studied settlement patterns in his native Germany and concluded that the arrangement and size of urban places was directly related to the economic services and functions the various locations offered. Each urban center was associated with an economic hinterland, sometimes referred to as the market area, resulting in a regular pattern of the growth and spacing of settlements. Christaller’s great contribution lay in explaining the economic fundamentals behind the formation of the hinterlands, their basic shape, and how certain principles might affect the urban spatial pattern.

Central Place Theory assumes that the physical geography considered is uniform— a completely flat plain exists, with no hills or mountains present, and no rivers, streams, or other features that would impede motion. Distance, therefore, is the only factor when considering transportation cost and accessibility to markets. Moreover, the plain holds an evenly spaced population, and no area has an advantage in terms of resource endowment—labor, capital, and raw materials are all equally available and of identical quality. Under these conditions, demand for goods is also identical at every location on the plain, and the only difference in cost between similar types of goods is the additional transport cost associated with traveling a greater distance to obtain the good, a concept linked to distance decay.

That is, each good or service offered at a location on the plain would have a specific range, or distance that consumers would be willing to travel to procure the good or service. More expensive goods or services that would be purchased less frequently, which Christaller called “higher-order” goods and services, would have a larger range than so-called “lower-order” goods and services that would be cheaper and purchased on a regular and frequent basis. For example, a higherorder good might be a diamond ring; a lower-order good would be a bottle of milk.

This would result in the formation of a specific hinterland in the shape of a circle for each good or service, extending outward from the place it was offered. The radius of the circle would equal the range of the particular good or service. Any consumers located beyond the boundaries of this hinterland would not travel to the place to obtain the good or service, as the transport cost would exceed the value of the good or service.