Abstract
We can look at urban centres as advantageous exchange points for producers and consumers, in which both agglomeration economies and scope economies have a higher probability of occurring. History justifies this argument, and experience underlines the importance of towns in their organizational capacity. In this chapter we explore town and hinterland interactions in a conceptual and theoretical way. First, of all we look at rural areas and the agricultural sector. Then we will focus on processes of urbanization, which leads us to a theoretical discourse about towns, inspired by, amongst others Christaller and Lösch. The last stage of the analysis, integrates all the foregoing elements into a conceptual framework of town-hinterland functions.
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Notes
- 1.
For an extensive description of the socio-economic situation of rural areas in the Netherlands, see Terluin et al. (2005).
- 2.
The market shape can no longer be circular, as otherwise (at least if we assume space-filling configurations) that would not allow for empty spaces with a profit potential between them. These empty spaces would not be in agreement with the zero marginal profit condition for market equilibrium; hence, new firms would continue to enter the market, until all empty spaces are exhausted. Consequently, a network of hexagons is substituted for the circles, because hexagons are slightly smaller than the extreme sales circles. These hexagons are the most efficient (i.e. transport-cost-minimizing) uniform spatial configurations that are entirely space filling.
- 3.
Again, we can make a distinction between the economic subsystem with its uses or functions of rural areas, the cultural subsystem, including the values assigned to these functions, and the political subsystem which tries to integrate the former two subsystems.
- 4.
The black square represents the town under research, the grey square represents a (smaller) town located in the hinterland.
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van Leeuwen, E.S. (2010). Town and Hinterland Interactions in Rural Areas. In: Urban-Rural Interactions. Contributions to Economics. Physica-Verlag HD. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-2407-0_2
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