The
market
principle predicts evenly spaced
cities; but the transportation and political principles modify these
regularities.With the transportation principle, towns that are not on major transportation routes are smaller than expected from the market principle. Transportation routes, such as a railroad in this illustration, attract business and allow new and larger towns to develop along the railroad. Rivers, canals, and highways, especially interstate highways, also reflect the transportation principle.
Political principle. Political boundaries
also "distort" the even spacing of cities.Why is the city on the Nevada side of the Nevada-Utah border larger?
Answer: the Nevada city of West Wendover on the state border
along
Interstate 80 is larger than Wendover, UT because all of the gambling business
(casinos) from Utah, where all types of gambling are illegal, can only be met in
Nevada, where casino gambling is legal, and gamblers want to drive the shortest
distance to gamble, which is the border city in Nevada, not a city in the
interior of Nevada as
would be predicted and expected by central place theory.
The table below indicates the miles from the Utah state line! Look at
photos of billboards for two of these casinos.
| City of West Wendover in Nevada [Wendover itself is located over the border in Utah.] | |||||||
| Casino | Address | Tables | Slots | Poker | Bingo | Rooms | |
|
Peppermill
Hotel Casino 0.25 miles from UT Stateline |
680 W Wendover Blvd West Wendover, NV 89883 |
25 | 900 | 0 | No | 198 | |
|
Rainbow Hotel Casino 0.25 miles from UT Stateline |
1045 Wendover Blvd West Wendover, NV 89883 |
30 | 997 | 0 | No | 298 | |
|
Red Garter Casino and Hotel 0.25 miles from UT Stateline |
1225 Wendover Blvd West Wendover, NV 89883 |
12 | 461 | 0 | No | 106 | |
|
Silver Smith Casino Resort 0.01 miles from UT Stateline |
100 Wendover Blvd West Wendover, NV 89883 |
39 | 665 | 0 | No | 250 | |
|
State Line Hotel and Casino 0.01 miles from UT Stateline |
101 Wendover Blvd West Wendover, NV 89883 |
70 | 1600 | 0 | No | 490 | |
1) the Catskills, NY: in 1881, the Grand Hotel was built to span across a two-county line, which allowed the owners to move the bar across county line as temperance movements forced one county or the other to go "dry"!
2) Scandinavia, particularly between Norway-Sweden and Sweden-Denmark.
How did the U.S. urban system actually develop? Check the table of historical developments of the U.S. urban system.
