方法对比

	Central Place Analysis	Spatial Gini Concentration Index
领域	Human Geography	Human Geography
方法族	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
起源年份	1933	1991
提出者	Walter Christaller	Corrado Gini (coefficient); locational adaptation in regional science / economic geography
类型	Theory and analytic framework for the size, number, and spacing of settlements	Descriptive index of how unevenly an activity is distributed across space
开创性文献	Christaller, W. (1966). Central Places in Southern Germany (C. W. Baskin, Trans.). Prentice-Hall. (Original work published 1933). ISBN: 9780131226302	Duncan, O. D., & Duncan, B. (1955). A methodological analysis of segregation indexes. American Sociological Review, 20(2), 210–217.
别名	Central Place Theory, Christaller Central Place Model, Settlement Hierarchy Analysis, Central Place Hierarchy	Locational Gini Coefficient, Spatial Gini Index, Geographic Concentration Index, Gini Index of Spatial Inequality
相关	4	4
摘要	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 spatial (or locational) Gini concentration index adapts the classic Gini coefficient to geography, summarizing in a single number between zero and one how unevenly an activity — an industry, a population group, a resource — is distributed across spatial units relative to a benchmark such as total population or land area. It is the workhorse measure for quantifying geographic concentration and agglomeration in economic geography.