Cent ans avant Christaller... Une théorie des lieux centraux

Robic, Marie-Claire

doi:10.3406/spgeo.1982.3696

Cited by 38 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…The theoretical basis: Applied central place theory Central place theory (CPT) emerged in the 19th century in France as part of early location theory (Reynaud, 1841;Robic, 1982) but it was formally introduced by Christaller (1933) in empirical terms and theoretically by Lo¨sch (1944Lo¨sch ( , 1954. This constitutes the starting point of our proposed method.…”

Section: Measuring the Centrality Of Locationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revealing centrality in the spatial structure of cities from human activity patterns

Schläpfer²,

et al. 2016

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Identifying changes in the spatial structure of cities is a prerequisite for the development and validation of adequate planning strategies. Nevertheless, current methods of measurement are becoming ever more challenged by increasingly dispersed forms of urban organisation. Being motivated by the recent availability of large-scale data on human activities, this paper proposes a new quantitative measure for the centrality of locations, taking into account both the number of people attracted to different locations and the diversity of their activities. This 'centrality index' allows for the identification of functional urban centres and for a systematic tracking of their relative importance over time. As a case study, the proposed index is applied to extensive travel survey data in Singapore for the years 1997years , 2004years and 2008 shown that, on the one hand, the city-state has been developing rapidly towards a polycentric urban form that compares rather closely with the official urban development plan. On the other hand, however, the downtown core has strongly gained in importance, and this can be largely attributed to the extension of the public transit system. 2

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Section: Measuring the Centrality Of Locationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revealing centrality in the spatial structure of cities from human activity patterns

Schläpfer²,

et al. 2016

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“…Fractal representation is also an antidote for the shortcomings of the spatial representations of the geometry of urban systems in the Christaller models, which take no account of the differentiation in density which central places create by their presence. According to M.-C. Robic (1982), this "distorting" of the spatial models of central places, which was given an approximate schematic formalisation by W. Isnard, had been noticed by Reynaud, who postulated a "bending of space" in the vicinity of urban centres and lines of transport.…”

Section: Urban Centres Construct Two Spacesmentioning

confidence: 96%

Settlement systems in the evolution

Pumain

2000

Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography

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The authors of a recent bibliographical essay (Pumain and Robic, 1996) stressed the degree to which theoretical approaches to urban places are static. When such theories do include time, it is usually only implicitly. The focus of explanation tends to be on structures, and much more rarely on the forms taken by change. No theory of urban systems, especially those expressed in geometrical or mathematical models, has so far satisfactorily integrated the urban phenomenon's temporal dimension, in the sense of change over historical time. However effective static interpretations may appear, as explanatory tools they completely overlook what is an essential characteristic of towns and cities, namely their capacity to change and adapt over time. The basic question to be addressed is that of how and why the man in the street is not mistaken to go on describing as "town" or "city" objects whose form, content and meaning have changed continuously over the centuries.It is important to be clear that an evolutionary theory is not the same as a historical theory. The aim is not to consider the whole sweep of urban history, nor to reconstruct the particular contours of urban genesis. The approach is not that of historical study in the sense of exploring the past to seek an "explanation" in a detailed account of how a place has developed. The objective is not the descriptive one of historical geography, but is instead that of producing a theoretical formalization of urban evolution as the process of the historical transformation of specific settlements. The aim is to demonstrate that a geographical object can be interpreted as the particular outcome, from among a set of possible outcomes, of a general dynamic process. In making the simplifications necessary for modelling, the notions of uniqueness and unrepeatability that characterise historical objects are inevitably lost, but it does take into account the non-reversibility of their particular history. Difficulties in static explanationsAs their structure is evolving slowly, it is not surprising that explanations for settlement systems have been initially searched in static theories, mainly in the framework of economics. But there is no evidence that an adequate explanation of urban systems could be derived from the principles of general economic theory. Economic theory is missing both the spatial and evolutionary features which seem indispensable for a real understanding of urban systems. Agglomeration economies and central placesMost urban theorists who have based their work on micro-economic theory explain the spatial clustering of economic agents, assumed to be utility maximisers, by the existence of "agglomeration economies" or "economies of scale external to the firm" (Catin, 1994, p. 105). An initial difficulty with this is that although these "agglomeration economies" are frequently invoked they are never actually measured. It can also be pointed out that for decisions about localisation to be based on agglomeration economies assumes that the town or city already exists...

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“…Observing cities through time and across a diversity of countries requires an understanding that enables an abstract view of the functions they fulfill. Classically, at least since Brian Berry coined the expression of "cities as systems of cities" in 1964, (and as already mentioned by the French Saint-Simonian engineer Jean Reynaud in 1841, [see Robic, 1982]), geographers identify two forms in relational space that exhibit different properties and correspond to two distinct spatio-temporal scales of interactions.…”

Section: Cities As Systems Within Systems Of Citiesmentioning

confidence: 99%