Lost in plain sight: revealing central flow process in Christaller’s original central place systems

Abstract

Walter Christaller’s central place theory famously conceptualizes local external urban relations (town-ness) while neglecting non-local connections characterized as central flow theory (city-ness). In this paper, we advance the study of central flow theory by revealing its existence within the foundation text of central place theory. We systematically separate town-ness and city-ness in Christaller’s original data on 1920s’ southern Germany to estimate the balance between the two processes for different urban places. We find that city-ness dominates town-ness in leading cities and show the severe limitations of focusing on just one urban external relation in urban and regional studies of settlement systems.