Christaller’s Central Place Theory
Complementary regions and the pattern of central places. The two (A) central places are the
largest on this diagram of one of Christaller’s models. The (B) central places offer good fewer goods and
services for sale and serve only the areas of the intermediate-sized hexagons. The many (C) central
places, which are considerably smaller and more closely spaced, serve still smaller market areas. The
goods offered in the (C) places are also offered in the (B) and (A) places, but the latter offer considerably
more and more specialized goods. Notice that places of the same size are equally spaced.
In 1933, the German geographer Walter Christaller attempted to explain the size and spacing
regularities he observed for towns in Southern Germany. In doing so, he developed a framework called
central place theory, which provided the descriptive understandings that he sought. Christaller did
recognize that his explanatory theory would best describe an idealized and somewhat artificial situation
with the following characteristics:
1. Towns that provide the surrounding rural agricultural population with such fundamental goods
as groceries and clothing would develop on a uniform plain, with no topographic barriers,
channelization of traffic, or variations in farm productivity.
2. The rural population would be dispersed in an even pattern across that plain.
3. The characteristics of the people would be uniform: that is, they would possess similar tastes,
demands, and incomes.
4. Each kind of product or service available to the dispersed population would have its own
threshold, or minimum number of consumers needed to support its supply. Because such goods
as sports cars or fur coats are either expensive or not in great demand, they would have a high
threshold, while a fewer number of customers within smaller tributary areas would be sufficient
to support a small grocery store.
5. Consumers would purchase goods and services from the nearest opportunity (store or supplier).
When all of Christaller's assumptions are considered simultaneously, they yield the
following results:
1. Since each customer patronizes the nearest center offering the needed goods, the
agricultural plain is automatically divided into noncompeting market areas—
complementary regions--where each individual town (and its merchants) has a sales
monopoly.
2. Those market areas will take the form of a series of hexagons that cover the entire
plain, as shown in the diagram. There will be a central place at the center of each of
the hexagonal market areas.
3. The size of the market area of a central place will be proportional to the number of
goods and services offered from that place and the largest central places (with the
largest market areas) will supply all the goods and services the consumers in that
area demand and can afford.
4. As the diagram indicates, the central place pattern shows a “nesting" of
complementary regions in which part or all of multiple lower-order service areas are
contained within the market area of a higher-order center.
In addition, Christaller reached two important conclusions. First, towns at the same size
(functional level) in the central place system will be evenly spaced, and larger towns (higher-order
places) will be farther apart than smaller ones. This means that many more small than large towns will
exist. In the diagram, the ratio of the number of small towns to towns of the next larger size is 3 to 1.
This distinct, step-like series of towns in discrete classes differentiated by both size and function is called
a hierarchy of central places.
Second, the system of towns is interdependent. If one central place were eliminated, the entire
system would have to readjust. Consumers need a variety of products and services, each of which has a
different minimum number of customers required to support it. The towns containing many goods and
services become regional retailing centers, while the smaller central places serve just the people in their
immediate vicinity. The higher the threshold of a desired product, the farther, on average, the consumer
must travel to purchase it.