Chapter 12: Services

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Key Issues

Where are services distributed?

Where are consumer services distributed?
Where are business services distributed?
Why do services cluster in settlements?

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KI #1 Where Did Services Originate?

Service = any activity that fulfills a
human want or need and returns money
to those who provide it
Services are located in settlements
Location of services is important for
profitability
Affluent regions tend to offer more services
Local diversity is evident in the provision of
services
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Percentage of GDP from Services,

2005

Figure 12-1
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KI #1 Where Are Services Distributed?

Three Types of Services
1. Consumer Services

Principal purpose is to provide services to

individual consumers who desire them and can
afford to pay for them.
Constitutes nearly of all jobs in the U.S.
Subdivided into four main types of consumer
services:
1.
2.
3.
4.

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Retail and Wholesale Services

Education Services
Health and Social Services
Leisure and Hospitality

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Where Are Services Distributed?

Three Types of Services
2. Business Services

Principal purpose is to facilitate other businesses.

Constitutes of all jobs in the U.S.
Subdivided into three main types of business
services:
1.
2.
3.

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Professional Services
Financial Services
Transportation Services

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Where Are Services Distributed?

Three Types of Services
3. Public Services

Purpose is to provide security and protection for

citizens and businesses.
Constitutes about 5% of all jobs in the U.S.

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Workers divided among various levels of government.

Federal Government: 1/6 of public sector
employees
State Government: of public sector employees
Local Government: 3/5 of public sector employees

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Where Are Services Distributed?

Rising and Falling Service Employment
Service sector of the economy has seen nearly all
the growth in employment worldwide.
Service sector has also been most negatively
impacted by the recession.

Change in Number of Employees

Within business services, jobs expanded most
rapidly in professional services e.g. engineering,
management, and law.
Within consumer services, fastest increase has
been in provision of health care.
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KI #2 Where Are Consumer Services Distributed?

Rank-Size Distribution of Settlements

Ranking settlements from largest to smallest in
many developed countries produces a regular
pattern or hierarchy.
Rank-size rule states that the countrys nthlargest settlement is 1/n the population of the
largest settlement.
Plotting populations on logarithmic paper produces
a straight line.

Exceptions include the presence of a primate citya city more than twice the population of the
second-ranking settlement.
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The Law of the Primate City and the

Rank-Size Rule
If all the settlements of a country are ranked according to population
size, the sizes of the settlements will be inversely proportional to their
rank
Zipf
The primate city is commonly at least twice as large as the next
largest city and more than twice as significant.
Mark Jefferson, 1939

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Rank Size Rule

A countrys nth-largest settlement is 1/n the
population of the largest settlement. For
example
Second largest city is 1/2 the size of the largest.
Third largest city is 1/3 the size of the largest.
Fourth biggest city is 1/4 the size of the largest.

etc.

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Primate Cities
Examples of Primate
Cities:
Paris (9.6 million) is
definitely the focus of
France while Marseilles
has a population of 1.3
million.
Mexico City, Mexico
(21.2 million) is
significantly larger than
2nd largest Guadalajara
(1.6 million).

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Rank-Size Distribution in the

United States and Indonesia

Figure 12-23
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Rank-Size Rule: What

does it mean for
A regular hierarchy of settlements shows
peoples
lives?
that the society has an even distribution

of various order services - for example, it

might only take someone living outside a
city 10-15 minutes to reach a doctor.
In LDC s, unequal distribution means in
some areas, people have to travel further
to get higher order services such as
medical care, eductaion, or Ferarris.
Most people in LDCs don t have cars - so
they will have to travel likely for hours to
obtain these services.
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Where Are Consumer Services Distributed?

Market Area Analysis
Service providers believe that the location of a
business is the most important factor to its profitability.
Steps to Determine Profitability of a Location
1. Compute the Range
Survey local residents about willingness to travel a specific
amount of time to the potential site of a new store.

2. Compute the Threshold

Identify how many patrons are needed to meet expenses.

3. Draw the Market Area

Draw the range around potential location of new store,
then identify whether or not the threshold is met within that
radius.

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Where Are Consumer Services Distributed?

Market Area Analysis
The gravity model predicts that the optimal
location of a service is directly related to the
number of people in the area and inversely
related the distance people must travel to
access it.
Essentially, the best location will be the one that
minimizes travel for all potential customers.

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KI #2 Where Are Consumer Services

Distributed?
Geographers use central place theory to
help explain why consumers services
follow a regular pattern based on size of
settlements, with larger settlements
offering not only more consumer services
but also more specialized ones.
Geographer Walter Christaller proposed the
concept of a a central place in the 1930s.

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Where Are Consumer Services Distributed?

Market Area of A Service (nodal region)
A central place is a market center for the
exchange of goods and services by people
attracted from the surrounding area.
Its is centrally located to maximize accessibility.

A market area, or hinterland, is the area

surrounding a service from which customers
are attracted.

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 How far are you willing to drive for

pizza?
How far would you be willing to drive to
see an oncologist that has a high
success rate in treating leukemia with
chemotherapy?

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Where Are Consumer Services Distributed?

Range and Threshold of a Market Area
The range of a service is the maximum distance
people are willing to travel to use it.
People travel short distances for everyday
services. e.g. groceries and movie rentals
People travel greater distances for services offered
exclusively in specific places. e.g. concerts and
professional sporting events

The threshold of a service is the minimum

number of people needed to support the service.
Service providers determine the suitability of a
service center by overlaying the range of potential
customers to its threshold.
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Range
The maximum distance most people are
willing to travel to use a service
Gas Station vs Husker Football game
Another example = McDonalds
In an urban area like Lincoln, the range
of a McDonalds is approximately 3
miles

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What factors go into range?

How many other people offer the
service
People think of range in terms of time,
not distance

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Threshold

Minimum number of people needed to

support a service
Minimum number of people to do
what????
Why do companies divide up space
between stores?

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Which customers inside the

range do you count????

Everyone can eat fast food

But can everyone shop at Gucci or
Louis Vuitton?
Each service counts its customers
differently

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Central Place Theory

How do you calculate the market area, or hinterland

of a given service? What shape would it be?
Range
Threshold

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 Low order
services (bread,
gas)
High order
services (mac
store, Ferrari
dealership)

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Where Are Consumer Services Distributed?

Hierarchy of Consumer Services
Only consumer services that have small
thresholds, short ranges, and small market
areas are found in small settlement.
Larger settlements provide consumer services
that have larger thresholds, ranges, and
market areas.
Developed countries have numerous small
settlements with small thresholds and ranges
and far fewer large settlements with large
thresholds and ranges.
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Where Are Consumer Services Distributed?

Nesting of Services and Settlements
Central place theory posits that market areas
across a developed country would be shaped
as a series of hexagons of various sizes,
unless interrupted by physical features.
Four different levels of market area exist:
1.
2.
3.
4.

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Hamlet (smallest)
Village
Town
City (largest)

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CPT: Limitations

Large, contiguous areas of flat land rarely exist

There are many forms of transport - cost does not
equal distance
People and wealth are not evenly distributed
People do not always go to the nearest good or
service
Services and goods are not all equal competitors

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So why use it?

Use this idea of the equal distribution of services
in planning new communities so that all people
have access to important high order services
and goods
Just by looking at the model forces us to
compare the model vs. reality - by explaining the
difference we better understand the distribution
of goods and services in urban settlements

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Friend, NE Population 1,027. The

median income for a household is
$39,886. 4.8% of the population is below
the poverty rate.
Lincoln, NE Population 258,379. The
median income for a household is
$48,846. 14.9% of the population is
below the poverty rate.
Chicago, IL Population 2,707,120. The
median income for a household is
$47,371. 21.4% of the population is
below the poverty rate.
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Services Lab Activity

We will examine the different types of services, market
areas, and locations of services by plotting multiple
services around the Midwest.
The purpose of completing this activity is to identify
how different types of services would likely appear in
different types of cities, because they have different
ranges, thresholds, and target demographics.
On your Lab Activity Packet, you will complete each of
the categories based on your research.
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Things to think about

Is there a pattern?
Are there any services that can only be found
in one town? Which ones? Why?
Which kinds of jobs are more specialized?
Why cant services count everyone within
their range?

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KI #3 Where Are Business Services

Distributed?
Hierarchy of Business Services
All urban settlements provide consumer services,
but not every settlement of a given size has the
same number and types of business services.
Urban settlements tend to specialize in one or a
few specific business services.
Geographers distinguish four levels of urban
settlements according to their importance as
business services providers.

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Where Are Business Services Distributed?

Hierarchy of Business Services
Business Services in Global Cities
Global cities or world cities are at the top of the
urban settlement hierarchy.
Center of the flow of information and capital in the global
economy.
Location of countless large corporations headquarters.
Global cities area divided into three levels: alpha, beta,
and gamma, which, in turn, are further subdivided based
on economic, political, cultural, and infrastructure factors.
Examples alpha++ (New York) and alpha+
(Chicago)

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Where Are Business Services Distributed?

Business Services in Developing Countries
Some businesses locate in developing countries,
because they tend to offer supportive laws, weak
regulations, and low-wage workers.
Primarily there are two main types of business
services offered in developing countries.
1. Offshore Financial Services
Taxes
Tax breaks include little to no taxes on income,
profits, and capital gains.
Privacy
Bank secrecy laws can help individuals and
businesses evade disclosure in their home countries.
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Where Are Business Services Distributed?

Business Services in Developing Countries
Primarily there are two main types of business
services offered in developing countries contd.
2. Business-Processing Outsourcing
Back-office functions, such as insurance claims
processing, payroll management, transcription work, and
other routine clerical activities, can be performed at a
lower cost, if they are performed by workers in
developing countries.
Developing countries with a large labor force fluent in
English are relatively more attractive to firms seeking a
place to outsource some of their routine work.

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Where Are Business Services Distributed?

Economic Base of Settlements
A settlements distinctive economic structure derives
from its basic industries, which export primarily to
consumers outside the settlement.
Nonbasic industries are enterprises whose customers
live in the same community-essentially, consumer
services.
A community's unique collection of basic industries
defines its economic base.
Economic base of a postindustrial society, such as the
U.S., are in business, consumer, or public services.
Ex. Computing and data processing services: Boston

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KI #4 Why Do Services Cluster in Settlements?

Services in Rural Settlements

Rural settlements tend to take one of two
forms.
1. A clustered rural settlement is an agricultural-based
community in which a number of families live in close
proximity to each other, with fields surrounding the
collection of houses and farm buildings.
Typically include homes, barns, tool sheds, and
consumer services, such as religious structures, schools,
and shops.

2. A dispersed rural settlement, typical of the North

American rural landscape, is characterized by farmers
living on individual farms isolated from neighbors.

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Why Do Services Cluster in Settlements?

Services in Rural Settlements
Services in Early Settlements
Early Consumer Services
Places to bury the dead
Religious leaders stationed at burial sites to perform service of
saying prayers for the deceased.

Likely encouraged the building of more permanent

structures for ceremonies and dwellings.
Manufacturing centers

Early Public Services

Primarily tasked with offering protection to everyone in the
settlement.
Walls built around settlements for protection.
Defenders (soldiers)

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Why Do Services Cluster in Settlements?

Services in Rural Settlements
Services in Early Settlements (contd)
Early Business Services
Settlement served as a neutral ground where several
groups could safely come together to trade goods and
services.
Officials in the settlement provided producer services.
Regulating the terms of transactions
Setting fair prices
Keeping records
Creating a currency system

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Why Do Services Cluster in Settlements?

Urbanization
Earliest Urban Settlements
Prehistoric Urban Settlements
Earliest urban settlements were probably in the Fertile
Crescent of Southwest Asia and North Africa.
Among the oldest is Ur in Mesopotamia (present-day
Iraq)

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Why Do Services Cluster in Settlements?

Urbanization
Earliest Urban Settlements Contd.
Ancient Urban Settlements
Settlements first established in eastern Mediterranean about
2,500 B.C.
Knossos (on the island of Crete)
Troy (in Asia Minor- [Turkey])
Mycenae (in Greece)

Aforementioned urban settlements were primarily trading

centers and organized into city-states- independent selfgoverning communities that included the settlement and nearby
countryside.
Athens was the largest city-state in Greece
Rome was believed to have grown to a population between
250,000 and 1 million.

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Why Do Services Cluster in Settlements?

Urbanization
Earliest Urban Settlements Contd.
Medieval Urban Settlements
Dense network of small market towns serving the needs
of particular lords covered much of Europe.
Largest medieval European settlements served as power
centers for the lords, church leaders, and as major
market centers.
Tallest and most elaborate structures were usually
churches.
Usually surrounded by walls.

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Why Do Services Cluster in Settlements?

Urbanization
Rapid Growth of Urban Settlements
The process by which the population of urban
settlements grows, known as urbanization, has two
dimensions.
1. An increase in the number of people living in urban
settlements.
Developing countries have 8 of the 10 most populous cities.

2. An increase in the percentage of people living in urban

settlements.
Percentage of people living in the urban settlements has
increased from 3% in 1800 to 6% in 1850, 14% in 1900, 30% in
1950, and 47% in 2000.
Developed Countries: of population is urbanized.
Developing Countries: 2/5 of population is urbanized.

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Summary
Most jobs are in the service sector, especially in
developed countries.
Consumer services generally follow a regular
pattern, based on size of settlements.
Business services disproportionately cluster in a
handful of urban settlements.
Services cluster in both rural and urban
settlements as a function of market areas,
ranges, and thresholds, which are integral to
central place theory.

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