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Urban hierarchy a term that relates the structure of town
Town

A town is a type of human settlement ranging from a few to several thousand inhabitants, although it may be applied loosely even to huge metropolitan areas; the precise meaning varies between countries and is not always a matter of legal definition....
s within an area. It can typically be illustrated by dividing towns into four categories:

1st Order Towns provide the bare minimum of essential services, such as bread and milk. The services which 1st Order Towns provide require only a very low threshold population
Threshold population

In microeconomics, a threshold population is the minimum number of people needed for a service to be worthwhile.In geography, the minimum number of people necessary before a particular good or service will be provided in an area....
 to survive, which make them suited to small communities. Services which require more customers to remain viable are not found in 1st Order Towns.

3rd and 4th Order Towns are larger cities and communities.






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Urban hierarchy a term that relates the structure of town
Town

A town is a type of human settlement ranging from a few to several thousand inhabitants, although it may be applied loosely even to huge metropolitan areas; the precise meaning varies between countries and is not always a matter of legal definition....
s within an area. It can typically be illustrated by dividing towns into four categories:
  • 1st Order Towns
  • 2nd Order Towns
  • 3rd Order Towns
  • 4th Order Towns


1st Order Towns provide the bare minimum of essential services, such as bread and milk. The services which 1st Order Towns provide require only a very low threshold population
Threshold population

In microeconomics, a threshold population is the minimum number of people needed for a service to be worthwhile.In geography, the minimum number of people necessary before a particular good or service will be provided in an area....
 to survive, which make them suited to small communities. Services which require more customers to remain viable are not found in 1st Order Towns.

3rd and 4th Order Towns are larger cities and communities. They are home to services which people are willing to travel longer distances to get to, as they are more important or rarer. The services in 3rd and 4th Order Towns require large threshold populations to survive, which is why they are only found in more developed areas.

It is clear, therefore, that there should be more 1st Order Towns than 4th Order Towns, as 1st Order Towns only require a small number of people in their hinterland
Hinterland

The hinterland is the land or district behind the borders of a coast or river. Specifically, by the doctrine of the hinterland, the word is applied to the inland region lying behind a port, claimed by the state that owns the coast....
 to remain viable.

German
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
 geographer
Geographer

A geographer is a scientist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's physical natural environment and human habitat .Though geographers are historically known as people who make maps, map making is actually the field of study of cartography, a subset of geography....
 Walter Christaller
Walter Christaller

Walter Christaller , was a Germany geographer whose principal contribution to the discipline is Central Place Theory , first published in 1933. This groundbreaking theory was the foundation of the study of cities as systems of cities, rather than simple hierarchies or single entities....
 proposed the concept of the K-Ratio to describe the number of towns in one order in relation to the next. While Christaller's model is rarely found, it still provides a useful rule for the establishment of towns, called central place theory
Central Place Theory

Central place theory is a geography theory that seeks to explain the number, size and location of human settlements in an Urban hierarchy. The theory was created by the Germany geographer Walter Christaller, who asserted that settlements simply functioned as 'central places' providing services to surrounding areas....
.

If a country had a K-Ratio of 3, for example, this would mean that there would be 3 times as many towns in the order beneath the current one. For example, if a country had the following number of towns in the relevant orders:
  • 1st Order Towns = 27
  • 2nd Order Towns = 9
  • 3rd Order Towns = 3
  • 4th Order Towns = 1


The country or area would be said to have a K-Ratio of 3, as a large, 4th Order Town had three 3rd Order towns within its hinterland, nine 2nd Order Towns and twenty-seven 1st Order Towns.