URBAN ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY
Two possible point of view to cities and urban organization
- The point of view of “geography of the city”: we look into the city, on the
surface dimension and the characters of land use and general arrangement;
- The point of view of “geography of the cities”: we look to a system of cities
where each cities is reduced to a functional node; we look to the network of
cities and to the relationship between the single nodes.
Central places’ theory
Walter Christaller
A german geographer
“Are there rules that determine the size, number
and distribution of towns?”
(1933)
August Losch (1938)
August Losch (1906-1945)
A german economist
Losch openly against Adolf Hitler. He refused to
emigrate and went into hiding to continue his
anti-Nazi work. Probably due to the lacks of this
illegal existence, he died quite young from scarlet
fever, just days after World War II had ended.
Christaller
observed the
urban
organization
in the south of
Germany and
asked himself
if there was a
reason at the
base of this
pattern….
General features and questions about urban
structures
• The larger the city the fewer the number of this cities. Why?
• The larger the cities’ size the further apart they are. Why?
• The larger the city the bigger the number of functions. Why?
• The most important services are normally located in the larger cities.
Why?
Is there a law, a rule, a principle that can explain this patterns?
Possible approaches to answer to this question….
-
Inductive
Deductive
Idiographic
Nomothetic
Christaller’s answer has been nomothetic and universalistic. Only through the
abstraction it is possible to be nomothetic.
The answer is not unrealistic but simply valid for the kind of reality it wants to
explain.
Economy is supposed to be something apart from the human world, something
that acts according to its own laws and rules (O/D and prices for example).
For this reason W. Christaller (and economists) are used to working with high
level of abstraction, disregarding all the natural and social specificities.
Why a city is more or less important?
Basic and non basic activities….
City as a functional node. Which kinds of functions are important for a city?
In Christaller’ theory services are the key of lecture (services sector)
Basic activities: they are provided to people and firms outside the local
community;
Non basic activities: they are provided to people and business located
within the community
Is there a hierarchical orders in services?
What about a hierarchy in the services?
Is it possible to fix a relationship between the level of importance of
the activities and the level of importance of the cities?
Walter Christaller’s Theory of Central Places (1933)
Basic assumptions:
• an isotropic (all flat) surface
• an evenly distributed population (quantity, density, system of
preferences, purchasing power)
• transportation costs equal in all directions and proportional to
distance
• no excess profits (Perfect competition)
• Agglomeration economies are postulated
–
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Key concepts
Central Location is a city that offers goods and services to the local
community and to its surrounding area;
Effective price: price fixed by the market plus the travel costs that the
consumer has to pay to go to the central place to purchase the good.
Range (of the market area): the maximum distance that the consumer is
willing to travel to reach the central location and buy the goods or
services;
Threshold: is the minimum size of the market (distance, enabling the
producer to cover all costs and makes it convenient the activity.
Hierachical order of the activities: it depends on the the range of its
threshold and flow rate (frequency)
Lӧsch A., The nature of economic regions
- d is an individual demand
curve for beer
- OP is the price at the
point of production p
- The demand of people
living in P is PQ
- PR is the freight from P to
R (must be included in
the price of the good)
- The demand of each of
the people living in R is
RS
- Farther out, at F, where
the freight is FR no more
beer will be sold
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PF is the maximum radius for
beer, and the total demand
within that radius is equal to
the volume of that cone which
we get by rotating the triangle
PQF around the axis PQ.
Lӧsch A., The nature of economic regions
Its volume is equal to the total
possible demand if the price at
the factory is OP
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The shape of trading area is not a circle, as we have so far assumed. Even if the
whole country were fulfilled with such circular areas that are close enough to
touch each other, a number of people could successfully try to enter the brewer
business. So we have some black corner. The way to make use of the black corners
is to change the circular form in a regular hexagon.
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The relationship between different levels of central places is driven by three hypothetical
principles:
– market principle, for each center there are three centre of lower order (k=3)
– transport principle, for each center there are four centers of lower order (k=4)
– administrative principle, for each center there are seven centers of lower order (K=7)
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