Consumer Profiles and Central Place Theory

Containment and Connectivity in Dutch Urban Systems: A Network‐Analytical Operationalisation of the Three‐Systems Model

“…Contrary to the daily urban system where we have the distinction between work and non‐work trips, the available data provides no similar distinction between the kind of shopping trips, which we could use to discriminate between node and edge. However, central place systems are agued to produce discrete categories (instead of a continuum) of agglomerations where higher‐order centres are only visited on a very irregular basis (Saey & Litaer 1980). In order to highlight these urban hierarchical relations, we use the stricter 1 per cent interaction criterion.…”

Christaller and “big data”: recalibrating central place theory via the geoweb

“…Christaller discussed the range of goods as "typical ranges" by "generic" or "average" customers (Christaller, [1933(Christaller, [ ] 1966; see also King, 1984;Saey & Lietaer, 1980). While there is always the proverbial outlier who will travel 100 kilometers to buy a croissant, there is a typical maximum distance beyond which people will forego the French delicacy, although social group variations apply (Johnston, 1966b;Rushton, 1966).…”

“…Nevertheless, for methodological reasons, we will infer the spatial behavior of a "generic customer" for specific central functions (King, 1984, pp. 77-79;Saey and Lietaer, 1980). Therefore, we can expect that aberrations to the anticipated relations between central functions and population distributions are related to the particularities of the Louisville area (i.e.…”

“…CPT, being a theory of settlement geography, provides a snapshot of a co-evolutionary process between the respective location of consumers and central function providers (Clark & Rushton, 1970;Dale & Sjøholt, 2007;Saey & Lietaer, 1980). Hence, CPT is neither reducible to consumer preferences nor to entrepreneurial decision-making.…”