Abstract
Walter Christaller’s central place theory famously conceptualizes local external urban relations (town-ness) while neglecting non-local connections characterized as central flow theory (city-ness). In this paper, we advance the study of central flow theory by revealing its existence within the foundation text of central place theory. We systematically separate town-ness and city-ness in Christaller’s original data on 1920s’ southern Germany to estimate the balance between the two processes for different urban places. We find that city-ness dominates town-ness in leading cities and show the severe limitations of focusing on just one urban external relation in urban and regional studies of settlement systems.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 345-353 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Regional Studies |
| Volume | 55 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Early online date | 25 Jun 2020 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Feb 2021 |
Keywords
- central place theory
- central flow theory
- urban external relations
- settlement systems
- primacy
- Walter Christaller