Central Place Theory

The central place theory is a theory of urban geographic location, proposed by German geographer W. Christaller in 1933, and is one of the basic theories for studying town clusters and urbanization. The theory assumes that if the terrain is completely flat, the soil quality is the same, the population is evenly distributed, and the accessibility is equal, the distribution of towns is uniform and regular in an equilateral hexagonal arrangement. The ideal town distribution pattern is to form a service center in the center of 6 rural settlements, and this service center is the lowest level town. The six lowest service centers are combined to produce a higher service center, a larger city. This pattern is gradually expanded to form a hierarchical system of cities at all levels.

Edited and translated by Zhang Yifei