Central Place Systems: Early Stages of the Continual Development

Abstract

The article is devoted to determining the conditions for the evolution of central place systems in the early stages – in the framework of the new and classical economic geography. We come to the conclusion that the new economic geography is not operational in relation to evolutionary processes, since it proceeds from postulates that violate the central place theory and based on incorrect assumptions (for example, validity of Bunge’s problem). We postulate the need to revise three main provisions of the classical approach: 1) on the initial correspondence of systems to the rank-size rule; 2) on increasing the compliance of systems with the rank-size rule as the share of urban population increases to 50%; 3) about the striving of central place systems to the state of equilibrium and – upon reaching it, for mature systems – an insignificant in its intensity ‘fluctuation’ around it. The authors define the conditions for the evolution of central place systems as follows: 1) the systems correspond slightly to the rank-size rule in the early stages and much better to the Christaller distribution; 2) as the share of urban population increases, the very slight compliance of systems with the rank-size rule worsens more and more; an increase in the share of urban population is accompanied by an improvement in the fit to the Christaller distribution; 3) systems strive for a state of equilibrium at any stage of their evolution; ‘oscillations’ around it for young systems are characterized by a significantly larger amplitude compared to that for mature systems

Keywords

• central place theory
• evolution
• new economic geography
• rank-size rule
• hierarchy
• spatial structure