External Urban Relational Process: Introducing Central Flow Theory to Complement Central Place Theory

Peter J. Taylor, Michael Hoyler and Raf Verbruggen
Additional contact information
Peter J. Taylor: School of Built and Natural Environment, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NEI 8ST, UK, crogfam@yahoo.com
Michael Hoyler: Department of Geography, University of Loughborough, Loughborough, LE11 3TU, UK, m.hoyler@lboro.ac.uk
Raf Verbruggen: Department of Geography, University of Loughborough, Loughborough, LE11 3TU, UK, r.verbruggen@lboro.ac.uk

Urban Studies, 2010, vol. 47, issue 13, 2803-2818

Abstract: Central place hierarchies have been the traditional basis for understanding external urban relations. However, in contemporary studies of these relations, a new emphasis on urban networks has emerged. Rather than either abandoning or extending central place thinking, it is here treated as representing one of two generic processes of external urban relations. Town-ness is the making of ‘local’ urban—hinterland relations and ‘city-ness’ is the making of ‘non-local’ interurban relations. Central place theory describes the former through an interlocking hierarchical model; this paper proposes a central flow theory to describe the latter through an interlocking network model. The key difference is the level of complexity in the two processes.

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098010377367 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:47:y:2010:i:13:p:2803-2818

DOI: 10.1177/0042098010377367

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Urban Studies from Urban Studies Journal Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().