Loschien Landscape/Modification

 Christaller’s model has been modified by an economist & geographer with a view to

render this model practical & applicable to the real world.

 It was given by August Losch through the study of Iowa State in 1940.

 His model has an empirical inductive approach and provides a moderate critic (since he
accepts many parts of Christaller).

 It was also the first attempt to develop a general theory of location with a major emphasis on
demand

ASSUMPTIONS:
 He simplified the world to a flat uniform plain and held supply constant and assumed that
demand for produce decrease with an increase in price. If a Price increase was the result of an
increase in transportation cost, then demand of the product would decrease with distance
from a production center. Losch treated each function as having a separate range, threshold,
and hexagonal hinterland.

 Based on the Urban places of entire Germany in which he took consideration of 150
Goods & Services

 He sought to explain the size and shape of market areas within which a location would
command the largest revenue

 The basis of concepts of Losch was much similar to those of Christaller’s original theory
 Based on Normative assumptions
 Isotropic surface, rational & economic man
 The basic concept of threshold, range, complementary were the same
 The hexagonal lattice pattern was also used by Losch as the best approximation
towards the circle

 However, he raised objections to

 The variability of ‘K’ which denotes the centrality
 He has allowed ‘K’ to vary freely which means that it is different for various goods &
services

 Losch considered 150 Goods & services and was antithetical to the overgeneralization of
Goods & Services into 3 principles
 He prepared 150 Hexagons for the selected Goods & Services and superimposed
them with higher-order at the base and lowest order at the top and rotated all the
hexagons until the rich and poor sectors have emerged – such sectors were
demarcated on the basis of the cost of commodity or services.
 Thus, Losch suggested a nesting pattern for 150 functions & therefore, a much
extensive, continuous values of K & not just 3 values (3,4,7)

 Although the surface is isotropic, Losch suggested that the distribution of Central Place is not
really uniform.
 Central Place & Service providers agglomerate to benefit from economies of
Scale (when the scale of service becomes bigger, costs are shared) such as Common
 labour market, common customer base, and sometimes common infrastructure & raw
material needs

 Therefore, there is a tendency where certain regions specialize in some types of function and
services such that type of services & goods may not be available in other parts of the
settlement complex.

 He found that Central place as the primate city (main dominant city) located in the
center of a circle & the circle was divided into alternate bands of 12 sectors – 6 city rich
sectors and 6 city poor sectors implying that city rich regions have an agglomeration of
certain function and city poor will have relatively less of these functions.

 Transportation lines radiate from the center & many hierarchies of settlements interwoven
together (Delhi Metro).

 The landscape so produced has a densely populated & congested settlement pattern with
greater randomness & spatial organization of Christaller is absent.

 This model is more applicable to the underdeveloped & developing landscape and 3rd world
countries.

 His model is based on demand & production of various Goods & Services which are
concentrated in Metropolis.

Merits
 Removes limiting constraints from Christaller’s model allowing more variation in
threshold sphere of influence & K values (providing practical applicability in today’s
scenario).

 Does not assume that settlement is based only on 3 aspects of Marketing, Transport
& Administration functions but by Combination of many (150 Goods & Services &
developed over 40 networks)

 Maximum purchases would be made locally.

Criticism
 Overemphasis on demand

 Abstract Nature and failure to take into consideration the problems arising from the
locational interdependence of manufacturing industries & plants

 Complicated & difficult to understand but it is closer to reality

 Overlapping of networks creates the problem of cartographic representation and are

difficult to understand

 CPT – applicable to those countries with sparse populations and Losch – with dense
populations.