Defining Central Place Systems Through the Analysis of Bus Services: The Case of Ecuador

Resumen

Much geographical research in the 1950s and early 1960s used a body of techniques for the analysis of data on bus services as a means to define and interpret the structure of central place systems in Western Europe and North America. Since the mid-1960s, however, both these techniques and the available data on bus services have largely fallen into disuse, principally because the bus has diminished markedly in importance as a means of inter-settlement transport in most of Western Europe and North America. Although bus services are no longer a good indicator of consumer movements in many ofthe more prosperous western countries, they are of increasing significance in many Latin American, African and Asian countries. This paper presents a case study of the analysis of bus services, using data for the Republic of Ecuador in 1975 and employing a number of modifications and additions to the body of analytical techniques used by earlier authors. On the basis of the data on bus services, 103 central places are identified, two being third order (Guayaquil and Quito), 16 being second order, and the remaining 85 being first order. Inter-relationships between centres are primarily between different levels of this hierarchical ordering (i.e. 'vertical' rather than 'horizontal'), and a nested hierarchy of 'areas of influence' is defined in combination with the ordering of centres. Ecuador can be divided into two separate, though interlinked, central place systems, one focused on Guayaquil and the other on Quito. Each of these two systems shows considerable primacy on the part of its third-order centre, with many ofthe second-order centres having only relatively small subsystems of central places and areas of influence.