Geography of Services

These flashcards cover key terms and definitions related to the geography of services.

Basic business

A business that sells its products or services primarily to consumers outside the settlement.

Business service

A service that primarily meets the needs of other businesses, including professional, financial, and transportation services.

Central place

A market center for the exchange of services by people attracted from the surrounding area.

Central place theory

A theory that explains the distribution of services based on the fact that settlements serve as centers of market areas for services; larger settlements are fewer and farther apart than smaller settlements.

Clustered rural settlement

A rural settlement in which the houses and farm buildings of each family are situated close to each other, with fields surrounding the settlement.

Consumer service

A service that primarily meets the needs of individual consumers, including retail, education, health, and leisure services.

Dispersed rural settlement

A rural settlement pattern characterized by isolated farms rather than clustered villages.

Economic base

A community's collection of basic businesses.

Enclosure movement

The process of consolidating small landholdings into a smaller number of larger farms in England during the eighteenth century.

Food desert

An area that has a substantial amount of low-income residents and has poor access to a grocery store, defined in most cases as further than 1 mile.

Gravity model

A model which holds that the potential use of a service at a particular location is directly related to the number of people in a location and inversely related to the distance people must travel to reach the service.

Hinterland

The area surrounding a central place from which people are attracted to use the place's goods and services.

Market area

The area surrounding a central place from which people are attracted to use the place's goods and services.

Nonbasic business

A business that sells its products primarily to consumers in the same settlement.

Primate city

A city that is the largest settlement in a country and has more than twice as many people as the second-ranking settlement.

Primate city rule

A pattern of settlements in a country such that the largest settlement has more than twice as many people as the second-ranking settlement.

Public service

A service offered by the government to provide security and protection for citizens and businesses.

Range (of a service)

The maximum distance people are willing to travel to use a service.

Rank-size rule

A pattern of settlements in a country such that the nth largest settlement is 1/n the population of the largest settlement.

Service

Any activity that fulfills a human want or need and returns money to those who provide it.

Settlement

A permanent collection of buildings and inhabitants.

Threshold

The minimum number of people needed to support a service.

Urbanization

An increase in the percentage of and the number of people living in urban settlements.