Page 118 - Life & Land Use on the Bahrain Islands (Curtis E Larsen)

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bands of extensive cultivation, culminating finally with a zone of ranching. The
concepts are deceptively simple and must be used with care. For example, most
land areas do not fit von TTunen’s idealized basic assumptions, which were applied
to an isolated state defined by the following bounds:
1. The state was cut off from the rest of the world and
surrounded by waste on all sides.

2. It was dominated by a single large city which acted as
the only urban center.

3. This city was located in the midst of a broad and
featureless plain of assumed equal fertility.

4. Farmers shipped their produce to the central city in
return for manufactured goods.

5. The farmer transported his own produce to the market
along a system of converging roads of equal quality and
with transportation costs directly proportional to the
distance from the urban center.
6. Profit by all farmers was maximized and adjusted
automatically to the needs of the central market.
Such concentric zones are clearly not inevitable, as Losch (1954) has
discussed. Very few geographic areas provide such ideal and homogeneous
physical settings or such isolated and market controlled economies. Yet even
with Bahrain’s known position in a world trade network, distinct parallels with
the model can be drawn. It is dominated by a single large city that acts as
the sole urban market. While not located in the center of a featureless plain
it
of equal fertility, Manama demonstrates the modified von Tbunen ring system
of a coastal port characterized by a semicircular array of land-use zones
about the city (Haggett 1966:162). BahrainTs coastal plain represents a skewed
approximation of equal fertility, and Bahraini farmers in preindustrial times
marketed their produce in Manama along a network of trails converging on
the urban center. Tbe lack of motorized shipping in the past gives a better
approximation for near constant transportation costs. Thus, the majority of