| An interdisciplinary research team led by professors of anthropology, geography, and history is conducting spatial analyses of regional systems in contemporary China as well as early modern Japan and France. For each project we are constructing a spatial framework, referred to as Hierarchical Regional Space (HRS), building on central place theory from Christaller and regional systems theory from von Thunen. Geographic information systems (GIS) and statistical tools facilitate modeling the core-periphery structures of macroregional systems at multiple hierarchical scales. In the societies under analysis here, the HRS model provides a useful framework for explaining the spatial variation in many demographic and ecological phenomena. |