QUESTION: Discuss the relevance of central place theory in

development of modern cities.

INTRODUCTION.
Central Place Theory seeks to provide an explanation of the numbers, sizes, and locations of urban
settlements in essentially rural, farming regions. Why is it, for example, that there are few large
cities, many more towns, and an even larger number of small villages or hamlets in such regions?
Why is it that the smaller places are located closer together and the larger ones further apart? What
are the relations between the roles of the different-sized urban settlements? How do these patterns
and arrangements change over time and from one region to another? These are the sorts of
questions addressed by central place theory.

The intellectual roots of central place theory can be found in the works of rural sociologists and
geographers in the early 1900s, but the main contributions to the development of the theory were
made in the 1930s and 1940s by two German scholars, Walter Christaller and August Lösch. In their
studies, the economic Interdependencies between town and country were spelled out, and the
notions of a hierarchy of economic functions and a corresponding hierarchy of different-sized urban
settlements were developed. The framework that they proposed has been found useful in
interpreting settlement patterns, in explaining the decline of many small villages, in planning the
location of new settlements and in analysing the social structures of rural communities. The theory
has attracted the interest of scholars not only in geography, but also in anthropology, economics,
planning, and sociology.

Walter Christaller’s Theory.

Christaller published his work in German in 1933. He introduced his discussion with the question,
“Are there Laws which determine the size, number and distribution of central places?” He believed
that there were such Laws to be discovered and that logic could be used to weave them together
into a theory. This theory, in turn, could be tested and verified with observations on the urban
settlement pattern of the Southern Germany of his time.

The cornerstone of Christaller’s theory was the idea of a functional interdependence between a
town and the surrounding rural area. This was by no means an innovation in the fields of settlement
studies and rural sociology, as has been noted already, but Christaller formalized the notion in a
decidedly new way. Upon the basic premise that “the chief profession, or chief characteristic, of a
town is to be the centre of a region”, he constructed a completely new framework for the study of
settlement Geography. Christaller did not ignore the fact that in contrast to central places there exist
various other types of settlements-for example, the “pointly bounded places” such as agricultural
villages, or the “areally bounded places” which include mining towns, bridge and fortress towns,
harbours and ports, border and custom towns—but these other places were disregarded in his
discussion. The focal point of Christaller’s attention was the central place with its central goods and
services.
Assumptions
Christaller assumed first of all that there was a boundless and homogeneous plain with soil fertility
and other natural resources being the same in all parts of it. This plain was settled uniformly, and the
farmers everywhere had the same levels of income and the same demand for goods and services.
Travel across the plain was equally possible in all directions, and the costs of travel and of
transporting goods were a function only of the distance travelled.

Christaller assumed further that both the farmers as consumers and the businesspersons in the
urban places as the producers of goods and services were rational individuals who would seek to
minimize their costs (whether they were transport or production costs) and to maximize their
profits. From the point of view of the consumers, this would imply that they would travel only to the
nearest central place that provided the goods and services that they demanded.

On the part of the businesspersons it meant that a good or service would not be produced and sold
if a profit could not be realized. If there was in sufficient demand, for example. For them to at least
break even, then it was assumed that they would not offer the service or produce the good. One
further assumption that was made by Christaller that is related in part to the assumption of rational
behaviour and also to the assumption that new businesses could start up wherever and whenever
they pleased) was that all of the settled plain would be equally well served by central places.

The development of Nairobi city through central place theory.

The growth of Nairobi city started during the era of the construction of Kenya-Uganda railway by the
British colony. The constructors who Indians sought to find a central place where they could store
their tools and construction materials. They choose Nairobi being central between Mombasa and
Kisumu and thus there Indian settlement started at Nairobi.

These Indian set up shops where they could sell their merchandise. Now small retail shops started
emerging at Nairobi. Buyers came from long distance to purchase such as farm tools from these
retail shops.

The Indians needed to feed thus the people from nearby agricultural areas Kiambu, Murang’a and
Kirinyaga travelled to Nairobi to sell their farm products. This made Nairobi to become a business
centre its population grew rapidly.

Due to the business and population growth in Nairobi there was need for other social amenities such
as banking system where people could save and borrow money for doing business.

The British colonialists saw this development of Nairobi and decided to make it an administrative
centre and later headquarters. This encouraged the white settlement who in turn attracted other
social amenities such as schools where their kids would learn, health centres and communication
centre through postal offices where they would send and receive messages from their fellow white
men in Kenya and in their home country.

All of these laid a foundation of Nairobi becoming a city it is today.

Advantages of central place theory.

Despite of all the drawbacks mentioned above, it would be wrong to discontent the central place
theory altogether. Christaller himself noticed a regularity of settlement spacing in his own part of
Southern Germany and later geographers have successfully applied his principles to the regions of
flat relief like the American Mid-West, the Argentina pampers, the Chinese lowlands and in
England’s East Anglia. This theory provides idealized patterns from which deviations in the real world
can be measured. Christaller’s theory is suited and therefore it is more relevant to the settlement
patterns in rural areas and those in developing countries where towns have relatively few functions.

Disadvantages of central place theory.

It only describes the equilibrium spatial patterns and tendencies. It is not a dynamic theory
explaining the actual processes by which centres are created at certain locations and the changes
that they undergo in those places. These settlement patterns are said to be unrealistic.
Homogeneous regions don’t exist and at the same time market areas are never hexagonal.
Producers may not always aim at profit maximization and customers may not shop at the same
store. Towns of the same size hardly share the same functions.
Conclusion
In conclusion numerous studies of the spacing of cities, the size and number of cities, the
relationships between the population sizes and functional complexity of urban places, and the
patterns of consumer shopping behaviour have usually been prefaced with restatements of parts of
central place theory and have then claimed to have tested certain of its predictions. In the next
chapter some of these later contributions will be reviewed. One other legacy of the work of
Christaller and Lösch is that central place theory has been seen by many to provide a convenient
framework for certain problems in regional planning. There are actual cases that can be pointed to in
different parts of the world where settlement patterns have been planned in accordance with
central place theory.
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