ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on nonbasic economic activities. For public services, threshold is the minimum number of users needed to make the activity viable. An increasing number of development interventions are designed to increase agricultural production and improve the provision of basic services in rural areas. Data are needed on two general aspects at central place functions: the supply of functions at each center, and the demand for functions in each area. Techniques for analyzing demand for central place functions are concerned primarily with identifying service areas and determining their populations. A better technique for delineating service area boundaries is based on actual patterns of utilization. Utilization information may come from surveys of either the rural population or those who provide the functions. Location-allocation methods can design improvements to spatial systems which minimize the average distance that rural populations must travel to their nearest service center.
