To the Editors:
Brian Hayes, in his column "Small-Town Story"
(March–April), startled me with his ability in the short space
of four pages to intuit, deduce, infer and summarize what
geographers have been doing for at least 70 years. At least since
the days of Walter Christaller, a German economic geographer who
created central place theory in the 1930s, geographers and regional
scientists have attempted to explain the size, location, spacing and
hierarchical relationships of towns. Among other findings of those
who succeeded Christaller was what is called the rank-size rule,
which attempts to show empirically what others have
theorized—that the sizes of cities within regions, small and
large, are related in a fairly strict way such that a relatively
simple mathematical function describes the association. For the
discipline of geography, the pity is that much of its work on town
size and location is not well known. The many contributions in this
area are usually scattered about libraries in sections holding books
on economics, sociology, rural sociology, travel and public policy.
If it weren't for some of the new technologies, such as those
associated with geographic information systems and satellite
imagery, I am afraid that scientific geography would remain unknown
to all but the most curious.
Arthur Getis
Journal of Geographical Systems
San Diego State University