International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 5, Issue 1, January 2015 1 ISSN 2250-3153 www.ijsrp.org Hierarehucal Distribution of Towns In Industrial Belt Of West Bengal: A Study of Burdwan District. S. Das, S. Prasad, N. Roy, N. Handique Research Scholar, Department of geography, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, Delhi. I. INTRODUCTION he hierarchy of urban settlements was first brought within the purview of geographical enquiries by G. K. Zipf in 1931, when he coined the term Central Places. The concept of Central Places was further developed by Walter Christaller in his monumental work on ―Central Places in Southern Germany (1933)‖. The theory postulates that to maintain efficiency of the settlements, the number of hierarchical central goods and services (functions) fall into categories. The theory is based on a distinction between centres, which are the seats of a supply of goods and services, and peripheries (regions complementing the centre) where demand, i.e. population using them, resides. The notion of centrality justifies clustering in a same place production of service of same level and of same range intended at the population which is scattered in the complementary region (or influence area), whose customers are polarised by the centre. The centres are indeed hierarchised, due to the existence of several levels of services defined by their spatial ranges (distance that the consumer is willing to travel in order to acquire the service, defined by the additional transport cost which can be afforded when buying the product) and by emergence thresholds (fixed by the volume of customers needed for the service supply to be profitable). Generally low order goods or services are necessities that need to be bought frequently, hence the desirability that they should be near the consumer. They are therefore ubiquitous, appearing in both low and high order centres. On the other hand higher the order of central functions the fewer the number of centres providing them and the farther the consumer have to travel to obtain them. Thus they have a wider range than lower order functions. According to the theory, influence areas of centres fit inside each other (for Christaller), because centres of upper level generally provide all service of lower level, or more or less apart from each other (for Lösch). The hypothesis of rational behaviour of consumers, which visit the closest centre, and competition between centres that share the customers have as consequence that cities are regularly spaced, and services of services levels is translated into a smaller number and a wider spacing of cities when moving upward in urban hierarchy. Quite numerous observations carried on in various areas of the world have shown how useful the theory is to understand spatial organisation of most services to resident population. The theory gives well enough account of differentiation of urban networks at middle levels scales, in relatively homogeneous regions. The hierarchy of urban centres fits in large part with a hierarchy of levels of services they concentrate, organised by frequency of use, amplitude of their spatial range and size of their thresholds of emergence The concept that centres can be graded in a hierarchical class system is implied in the theory. Each order of the hierarchy has the characteristics central functions and discrete population level. Low order centres posses less complex functions than those of higher order while the latter possess both the group of functions characterizing their order as well as those functions available at low order centres. The higher the order of the centre the greater is its centrality. The theory further states that higher order centres are more widely spaced than those of lower order with spacing varying in mathematical ratios. The theoretical spatial result of the model is that the area of influence of centres is arranged in geometric pattern with the area of influence of low order centres nesting within those of higher order. Associated with this is the fixed K idea which states that a fixed number K of settlements exist for each settlement in the next higher order. In the special cases considered within the Christaller – Losch model, the resulting spatial pattern in a regional system is such that K = 3, 4 or 7 according to the market, transport, administrative principles respectively. The rigidity of the fixed idea is well known . Therefore, the historical and geographical conditions need to be considered in explaining the pattern of urban centres in an area. In the present study we try to see the hierarchy of settlements with respect to the infrastructure. The general view is that larger the number of population better will be the infrastructure and it will have a higher place in the hierarchy and lesser the population lesser will be the infrastructure facilities and lower place in the hierarchy. We will try to see if it holds good in the case of the study area taken for this analysis. The study area for the analysis is Burddhaman. All the towns are taken into consideration. Burddhaman lags behind the other Indian states in human, economic development terms. The economy of Burddhaman is largely industry and service oriented, but it also has a significant agricultural base. The district also has a largel industrial sector. Burddhaman has a grossly adequate educational infrastructure creating a huge match between demand and supply. This problem further gets compounded by the growing aspirations of the people and an increase in population. The craving for higher education among the general population of Burddhaman has led to a massive migration of the student community from the state. Burddhaman has a robust cinema industry for the Hindi and Bengali language. According to the 2001 census Burddhaman occupies a place second from the top with respect to the level of urbanisation which is almost 35% compared to the state average of 30%. The Census recognizes three categories of urban places: metropolitan areas, cities and towns. The Census typology of urban places is entirely based on the population criterion. The term ‗metropolitan area‘ is applied to places with a population of T