Comparer des méthodes

	Central Place Analysis	Location Quotient
Domaine	Human Geography	Économie
Famille	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Année d'origine	1933	1960
Auteur d'origine	Walter Christaller	Developed in regional science; codified by Walter Isard
Type	Theory and analytic framework for the size, number, and spacing of settlements	Descriptive index of relative regional concentration
Source fondatrice	Christaller, W. (1966). Central Places in Southern Germany (C. W. Baskin, Trans.). Prentice-Hall. (Original work published 1933). ISBN: 9780131226302	Isard, W. (1960). Methods of Regional Analysis: An Introduction to Regional Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN: 9780262090032
Alias	Central Place Theory, Christaller Central Place Model, Settlement Hierarchy Analysis, Central Place Hierarchy	LQ, Coefficient of Localization, Regional Specialization Ratio
Apparentées	4	3
Résumé	Central place analysis is the study of the size, number, and spacing of settlements as service centres, grounded in Walter Christaller's central place theory of 1933. It explains why settlements form an orderly hierarchy — many small villages, fewer towns, a handful of cities — and why higher-order centres are spaced farther apart and offer more specialized goods, deriving the famous nested pattern of hexagonal market areas from two economic concepts: the range and the threshold of a good.	The location quotient (LQ) is a simple descriptive index that measures how concentrated an industry is in a region relative to a larger reference area, usually the nation. It is the ratio of the industry's share of local employment (or output) to its share of national employment. An LQ above one means the region is more specialized in that industry than the nation as a whole; an LQ below one means it is under-represented.