Revisiting Yoshio Watanabe's Central Place Studies

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24520894
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Human geography
• Research Institution: Tokyo Metropolitan University
• Principal Investigator: SUGIURA Yoshio 首都大学東京, 都市環境科学研究科, 教授 (00117714)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): HARAYAMA Michiko 首都大学東京, 都市環境科学研究科, 助教 (00117722) ; ISHIZAKI Kenji 奈良女子大学, 研究院人文科学系, 教授 (10281239)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 中心地研究 / Christaller / 渡辺良雄 / 学説史 / 東北地方

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Setting the Tohoku region as a research laboratory, Yoshio Watanabe wrote many papers concerning central place system in the 1950s through the later 1960s, which resulted in a typology of central place system based on topography. The originality of his central place studies is summarized as follows: 1) he contrived simple and fully worked-out methods to classify central functions skillfully using (triangle) section paper; 2) he suggested that as a causal factor to form the central place system in the Tohoku region, the social relationship between urban settlement and rural area in the feudal system was more effective than the economic principle on which central place theory was based.

Free Research Field

地理学