ABSTRACT
Central place theory, including the later modifications by Berry and Garrison (1958) and Losch (1954), is heavily dependent upon assumptions about the locational response to demand by consumer and particularly retail services. It is tempting to think, and the empirical material in Chapter 4 may have promoted the belief, that it provides a good theoretical basis for understanding the location and frequency of all service activities. But the theory does not make any explicit reference to producer services or to public sector services which are provided on a not-for-profit basis (Stanback, 1979). Some educational, government and tourist functions may be dictated in their location by environmental considerations, very specific transport requirements, or historical inertia. Perhaps it is not appropriate to think of settlements where such activities are prominent as central places supplying their services to a particular hinterland; rather they are specialized centres with markets spreading very much more widely than central place principles alone would allow. The location pattern of services may accordingly be divided into general service centres and specialized service centres, whose common purpose is to export goods and services and to import goods and services from other areas.
