Compair the thnen and christaller theory Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Compair the thnen and christaller theory - Essay Example The desire to make geography more scientific, or at least more intellectually acceptable as a discipline, led to the adoption of statistical methods as a primary research technique. Location (or spatial) analysis, as this new aspect of geography is called, seeks to analyze and explain the factors that control humankind's spatial organization, specifically by statistical methods and models. Mathematically constructed models became tools useful to the geographer in coping with rapidly accumulating knowledge, and they could also be used to predict future trends or spatial patterns. This was not the first time statistics had been used for geographic research. As early as the 1920s and '30s, Torsten Hgerstrand in Sweden and Walter Christaller in Germany had used statistical techniques. Only in the 1960s, however, did significant growth in statistical methodology occur. Johann Heinrich von Thnen was born on June 24, 1783, was a German agriculturist. In 1826 he wrote Der isolierte Staat (The Isolated State), in which he proposed his theoretical model showing concentric belts of agricultural production surrounding a market center and demonstrating the relationship of commodity transportation costs to production location. Thnen laid the foundations of contemporary spatial theory. (Larry, 2004) This non-linear reformulation of the von Thnen model... model explicitly allows for input substitution and provides for the rate of production intensities to be determines endogenously by the profit maximizing behavior of the individual farmers. If the transport rate is constant and production occurs with constant returns to scale, then the rent function, under bid rent tenancy, or owner occupied farming, is indeed nonlinear and strictly convex to the origin. It is also possible to determine the spatial distribution of labor density as well as levels of crop yield in accordance with this basic model. It is not surprising that these results confirm the Dunn-Isard conjecture as the bid rent functions so determined assume a strictly convex form, and the intensity of cultivation does, in fact, increase toward the market center. Now the nonlinear von Thnen model can be formulated to conform to the logistics of industrial production in order to derive a non-agricultural rent function, also based on constant-returns-to-scale technologies. Firms in the urban sector go to the market center to obtain their raw materials, which were previously delivered there from the agricultural sector. Some firms specialize in the production of various intermediate goods which are also delivered to the market, where other firms purchase them for incorporation in their own products. Final goods are then delivered to the market for sale to the general public. Capital is introduced as a production input, the amount of which is explicitly governed by the price ratio of labor and capital. This "augmented" model ultimately generates comparable results with regard to the shape of the resulting rent function as well as the spatial distribution of levels of production and employment and therefore the densities of capital and labor. Although based on