Community of Interest Areas Notes on the Hierarchy of Central Places and Their Hinterlands

Abstract

I N reviewing, in the April, 1956, issue of the Geographical Review, the 1/625,000 Map of Local Accessibility, with Explanatory Text, published in 1955 by the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain,1 J. E. Brush remarked that the conception of centers and hinterlands of different orders of importance, or of magnitude, had not been made very clear.2 Since the map was mainly designed, and the text partly written, by me, I have attempted in the present paper partly to make good this omission. The idea of five main orders, from metropolis to service village, has been fairly widely, if only tacitly, accepted, and this would not have been so if something corresponding approximately to this hierarchy had not been found practically useful and recognizable. Even workers with whom geographers have little contact, such as Lee R. Dice,3 have recognized this kind of hierarchy. Dice, in the jargon of ecology, uses the terms homestead ecosystems, village-centered ecosystems,'' town-centered ecosystems,9 city-centered ecosystems, national ecosystems, and international ecosystems, which have replaced older tribal ecosystems. One type of center and hinterland has in recent years been much more intensively studied than others; this has been the fourth order. It is useful to consider first of all why this should have been so.