A Note on the Central Place Theory

Although the pioneering study by Christaller (1933) has produced a flood of publications on central place theory which now extend beyond the limits of a short survey, the fact remains that these publications rest on investigations that are purely static and retrospective. Essentially the publications represent no advance on Christaller's work. They attempt, that is, to describe existing positions and to develop indicators for the identification of central place structures. In doing so these writers adopt, without exception, the concept of “excess function”⁽¹⁾ which was already used by Christaller to characterize central places. [A survey of Christaller's ideas can be found in Berry and Pred (1965); see also Beckmann (1968), von Böventer (1969), Gustafsson and Söker (1972), Biermann (1973a) and elsewhere.] None, however, shows how this excess function came into being, or, alternatively, how it can be explained, and whether it exhibits objective spatial stability⁽²⁾. It is often overlooked, or uncritically accepted, that numerous value judgments and assumptions on the behaviour of consumers are, in addition, contained in this excess function. In other words, the discussions in these publications have no explanatory character. By the same token they contain, strictly speaking, no empirically-based theories; that is, they lack the ‘explanans' that would make it possible to forecast ensuing occurrences and phenomena (Popper, 1959).