CENTRAL PLACE SYSTEMS: FORMATION OF THE POPULATION AND SPATIAL STRUCTURES

The study is methodological in nature and aims to present the sequence of analysis of the population and spatial structures of a central place system. For the distribution of settlements by levels of the hierarchy, we use reference tables reflecting the contribution of each central place to the accumulated value of the K-parameter. It is postulated that, at each stage of a system’s evolution, there is only one variant of the hierarchy of central places by population size and the only variant of their location in the lattice: in the process of research they are determined using the equations and principles of central place theory, rather than being given ‘from above’. The process of determining the morphological structure is based on the principle of local predetermination, according to which at any moment of time a central place system has an optimal locally predetermined spatial structure which does not necessarily coincide with that in general theoretical terms. It is concluded that any settlement system can be stable provided that it corresponds to the theoretical optimum for a set of interacting different-parameter levels, and not for an equal-parameter lattice as a whole: the optimal state is the equilibrium state of not the entire system but individual levels of the hierarchy.