central place

Place to which people travel from the surrounding area (hinterland) to obtain various goods or services. Central places will often be towns or areas within towns; for example, a shopping arcade that serves people in the immediate neighbourhood with low-order goods (see hierarchy). Central places vary in importance; higher-order goods and services are provided where the threshold population is reached.

According to central-place theory, if each settlement of a particular order acts as a central place for certain levels of goods or services, there should be a regular pattern and distribution of settlements within an area. This theory was first put forward by German geographer Walter Christaller in 1903. He suggested that each settlement would be surrounded by a hexagonal sphere of influence (hexagonal rather than circular because circles cannot fit together exactly). The size of these hexagons depends on the order of the central place – village, town, or city. Each order would have a market area three times that of the settlement below. Settlements of each order would therefore be spaced at regular intervals in a spatial hierarchy. Christaller took a number of factors for granted; for example, he assumed that transport was equally possible in all directions. In the real world this is not the case; however, the theory provides a starting point for explaining settlement distribution.