The context of Beijing's commercial network —an empirical study on the central place model

Abstract

The objective of this article is to expound the evolution of Beijing's commercial distribution and put the basic facts on the central place model in order to review the past, look upon the present, and predict the future. In terms of the central place theory, the spatial structures and deformations of Beijing's commercial activities are fully discussed, the inherent mechanism on the locational shifts of centers is revealed, and a centripetal zoning concerned with metropolitan commercial system is put forward. Having analyzed the factors of trade and transportation allocation and utilized both qualitative and quantitative methods, the author works out a long-term central place scheme for Beijing's commercial network with a supercenter, Xidan, and other centers of different ranks.