THE ORDER OF AREAS SEEN FROM THE ARRANGEMENT OF CENTRAL PLACES

Abstract

An area is a spatially organized body of human masses which has a center. It means that our human society has evolved, has grown, and has enlarged economically and socially through mutual human contacts. Man's social, economical activities in an area are realized and carried out through the contacts of plural men. Some of them are daily-life activities such as shopping, amusement, and social intercourse, and some of them are business-culture activities such as conferences, meetings, research societies, and business talks. Such activities of inhabitants as exchange, intercourse, recreation, exploitation, search for valuables, and anti-socialistic activities, are mostly carried on in spatially limited areas. These key bases where human masses gather and contact, the author calls “Central Places”. Whether central places are great or small will be determined by the total number of the inhabitants who contact with each other and the extent of the areas concerned. Central places have a wide range, and vary from the largest one like a metropolis to the smallest one like a rural town where people shop near the railway station or a drive-in by the highway.
Central places are important bases which exercise regulation and render service activities for the inhabitants and the community system. In addition to this, central places can be said to be such mirrors as reflect sensitively the economic, social prosperity and depression of the back-grounds. In the spatial arrangement and the tendency of change of the central places that are nuclei of areas, a certain definite order can be seen. That is because an area, which is the space organized by men, is a systematized body, on which (1) men's natural activity trend, (2) the space-controlling power of an area, and (3) various forms of culture and civilization as their medium term, have been reflected. The order of areas is influenced by many different organizations, but, on the contrary, it has a strong controlling power which regulates the daily lives of inhabitants. The object of this study is to explain the actual state of the order of areas through the changing processes of urbanization which are appearing in the central places. For that purpose, the author first classified the changing processes of areas called ‘urbanization’ into the four patterns, that is, Nuclearization, Urbanization, Metropolitanization, and Megalopolitanization. Then he investigated the characteristics, the areas concerned, the changing contents, and the extent of influence, of each pattern. Through such investigations the author has made strenuous efforts to discover and clarify the essential nature of the order of areas which is governing the whole Islands of Japan.