ABSTRACT
For the past five years there has been increasing interest among urban researchers and planners concerning the core of the city. Almost all observers of Central business District (CBD) phenomena have recognized that the central region of the city is not one of uniform intensity, but contains an exceptionally limited area of very high land value upon which most of the downtown retail and office uses exist. In the latter instance, many specific questions can be answered by studying the entire region, in regard to CBD planning, which cannot be answered from studying the internal characteristics of a particular CBD itself. For example, the central place importance of a city has much to do with the capacity of its CBD to cater to particular specialized functions. Although there are many transitional uses in the frame, certain strongly identifiable functions have been growing in these areas in most western cities for the last half-century at least.
