SOME EMPIRICAL EXAMPLES OF CENTRAL PLACE MODEL IN CHINA''S RURAL AND URBAN STUDIES

Sincethe195Os,theCentralPlaceTheory(Cpp)hasbeenprevailingallovertheWest.Nevertheless,theaPplicationofthismodelinChinasplanningworkusedtobeanargUableproblem.Negativeviewswerefl.thehyPothesisabouttl1enatUralandhumanhomogeneityisdevoicedfromthereality;2.thetheorytvasge11eratedfrol11caPitalistsociety,wherethehistorical,socialandeconomicconditionsaredifferentfromChina's.Inrecentyears,theauthorshavetriedtoapplyCppmode1toChina'Surbanal1dregionalplanning,thesatisfactoryresu1tsprovedthegenera1ada…

SOME EMPIRICAL EXAMPLES OF CENTRAL PLACE MODEL IN CHINA''S RURAL AND URBAN STUDIES

At the beginning of the 1980s, the Central Place Theory(CPT) was introduced into China from the West. The authors of this article are the initiators of applying this model to China's urban and regional planning as well as to the allocation of commercial activities. Since the commodity economy has been developing in China for thousands of years,most of the areas in eastern plains and inland basins of the country show the spatial structure of typical central places scene. During some six years, the authors participatd in a lot of rural, urban and regional planning projects in which the spatial phenomena and relevant internal mechanism proved this medel and its deformation. This paper gives only a few examples of the application of CPT in China. 1. The distribution of rural markets: the empirical study is based mainly on the situation in Shengfang Town and its vicinal area, 2. The spatial combination of urban Systems; problems about city allocation in North China are emphasized, 3. Commercial centres in city and the networks: a crucial study on commercial distribution of the metropolis Beijing is done by using the central place model.