The Contribution of Spatial Interaction Modelling to Spatial History: The Case of Central Places and their Hinterlands in the Territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire

Research on spatial history can be enriched by using approaches from quantitative geography. We analyse an historical regional system and highlight three basic assumptions, building upon Christaller’s central place theory: cities do not stand alone in space, they interact with their hinterlands, and they are hierarchically organised. We investigate the relative position of central places in space and define their hinterlands using a spatial interaction modelling approach. We present the example of functional regional taxonomy in past environments, which therefore has a higher degree of uncertainty in the results and in their interpretation. We use a variant of Reilly’s model to define the functional regions in Austria-Hungary at the beginning and at the end of the 20th century. We present a possible interpretation of the model results based on the identification of the major factors responsible for developments in the urban and regional systems of Austria-Hungary over 100 years. We conclude that the development of urban and regional systems in the territory of the former Austria-Hungary was not considerably affected by the role of political-economic systems, the administrative organisation of states, nor by the different stages in economic development of its formerly constituent territories.

The spatial reach of financial centres: An empirical investigation of interurban trade in capital market services

This article investigates the spatial patterns of interurban trade in capital market services by analysing 16,324 trade links involving advisers and clients in the Visegrád Four plus Austria and their counter-parties worldwide between 2000 and 2014. We aim to address a gap in the research on financial centres and interurban trade by providing empirical evidence on the relationship between the complexity of services and the size of market areas across which they are traded. We utilise recent contributions to Central Place Theory (CPT), which provide us with suitably general models of interurban trade applicable to financial services. The key proposition of CPT in this respect is that more complex services are traded across larger market areas, thus translating into a further spatial reach of service centres. Given that these propositions are derived at a very general level, we rely on global city theory for explaining the underlying causal mechanisms in the context of capital market services. Our analysis examines the geography of adviser–client trade links to investigate how spatial patterns of interurban trade in capital market services are shaped by the characteristics of the services traded. We uncover evidence that more complex and larger transactions are associated with higher distance between clients and financial services providers. This in turn means that more complex services are traded across larger market areas. While clients in Central and Eastern Europe can generally find suitable providers for less complex capital market services locally, they often rely on financial services providers globally for the most complex transactions.

Mobility, Time, and Value

This chapter analyzes the high-stakes of the Gaokao, which, together with its undetermined outcome, forms a pillar of its fatefulness. It talks about how people see the exam as something consequential since it enables them to migrate from rural to urban places, expanding their capacity to realize important life projects like marriage, childbirth, and eldercare. It also emphasizes the value to people of the migration from rural to urban living, which relates intimately to how they perceive it as a journey toward modernity and national development. The chapter refers to the central-place theory that models China's complex system of interconnected, hierarchically nested regions and markets and corresponds closely with people's native understanding of place. It recounts how urban hierarchy assumed its current form after the commercial revolution of the Tang-Song transition in the ninth to thirteenth centuries.

Central Place Theory and the Emergence of Floating Markets in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam

This research re-examines Walter Christaller (1933)’s central place theory paradigm to explain the emergence of a network of floating markets in the Mekong River Delta’s dense network of rivers and canals. Because road transportation is underdeveloped, floating markets play an important role for local people. They provide access to transportation and opportunities to trade, especially for the region’s diverse agricultural products. Furthermore, the floating markets support inland infrastructures. This research challenges Christaller’s (1933) assumptions about population thresholds and geographical range, and Mulligan et al.’s (2012) understanding of interaction among consumer choices, company aggregation and functional hierarchy. It finds that riverine traders employ flexible transaction strategies.

Measures of Residential Energy Access in Mexico, 2008–2014

The concept of energy access in developing countries, such as Mexico, encompasses the accessibility to reliable fuels for heating, cooking, and lighting purposes while reducing coal and firewood consumption. This paper suggests residential energy access indicators by applying accessibility theory and estimating demand equations for electricity, natural gas, propane, firewood, and coal using Mexican households’ survey data from 2008 to 2014. Sprawl measures, gravity model, and central place theory are the accessibility theories supporting the accessibility indicators. The suggested energy access indicators are statistically significant and show the expected signs when applied to propane in Mexican households in 2014. The greater the household income, population size, education level of the household head, energy access, and the lower the energy price and the household size, the greater the demand for energy from 2008 to 2014. By contrast, the greater the education, the lower the demand for firewood and coal. Policy-makers in Mexico can use the suggested results to complement the energy access indicators suggested by international agencies to evaluate energy access performance and better understand the drivers of the different energy goods consumed by Mexican households.

New Approaches in Defining the Structure of Urban Settlement Systems

Technological developments such as the extensive use of modern communication tools and increasing infrastructure opportunities have changed the spatial organization forms and daily life practices in cities. Previously, central place theory, which explains hierarchical urban patterns based on the minimum population size-based threshold concept and the maximum distance-based range concept has become incompetent to explain the spatial organization of today's settlements. At this point, in defining the urbanization processes and explaining the spatial organization, the search for new conceptual and methodological approaches has become important. In this study, changing urban systems are evaluated in terms of closeness centrality, attribute centrality, network centrality, and geographical centrality based on space of flows and interpreted by current parameters. It is concluded that in defining the structure and spatial organization of urban systems, the morphological and functional dimensions of urban systems should be evaluated besides the parameters of population, geographical proximity or network relations. In this context, a model proposal has been developed by using current parameters such as density, diversity, mobility, connectivity, spatial-temporal structure, and urban networks.

IMPROVEMENT OF WAGE SYSTEM IN HEALTH CARE AS A FACTOR IN INCREASING THE ECONOMIC SECURITY OF THE REGION

The article considers the problems in regional healthcare wage system. It is found that the persistent imbalance between income and expenses formed against the background of increased funding of the public health. It is noted that the main item of expense of medical organizations is the wage fund, which remains understudied. The high share of labor costs, low level of wages in the industry compared to neighboring entities, wage differentials, erratical wage framework and low share of the guaranteed part of wages, overloading of the wage system and low level of automation of information systems are highlighted as major issues. At the same time, in the author’s view, the healthcare wage system that meets modern requirements is the key to the economic and social security of the region and the state. The regional healthcare wage system needs to develop new approaches. According to the author, it is required to build a wage system according to a hierarchical type, depending on the level of the medical organization, based on the central place theory and the development of inter-municipal cooperation. The analysis is based on statistical and analytical data for the last 5 years, as well as methods of dynamic and structural analysis, measuring the achievement of targets and integrated approach.