Human Settlements

• A human settlement is defined as a place inhabited more or

less permanently. The houses may be designed or redesigned,
buildings may be altered, functions may change but settlement
continues in time and space.

Classification of Settlements Rural Urban Dichotomy

• It is widely accepted that settlements can be differentiated in
terms of rural and urban, but there is no consensus on what
exactly defines a village or a town however occupation is taken
as the criteria.
• Population size, Administrative divisions, residence are also
other criteria for dividing rural/urban settlement.
• Sub Urbanisation is a new trend of people moving away from
congested urban areas to cleaner areas outside the city in
search of a better quality of living.
• The census of India, 1991 defines urban settlements as “All
places which have municipality, corporation, cantonment board
or notified town area committee and have a minimum
population of 5000 persons, at least 75 per cent of male
workers are engaged in non-agricultural pursuits and a density
of population of at least 400 persons per square kilometers are
urban.

Types and Patterns of Settlements

• Settlements may also be classified by their shape, patterns
types. The major types classified by shape are:
→ Compact or Nucleated settlements: These settlements are
those in which large number of houses are built very close to
each other. Such settlements develop along river valleys and in
fertile plains. Communities are closely knit and share common
occupations.
→ Dispersed Settlements: In these settlements, houses are
spaced far apart and often interspersed with fields. A cultural
feature such as a place of worship or a market, binds the
settlement together.

Rural Settlements
• Rural settlements are most closely and directly related to
land. They are dominated by primary activities such as
agriculture, animal husbandary, fishing etc.
• Some factors affecting the location of rural settlements are:

→ Water Supply: Usually rural settlements are located near

water bodies such as rivers, lakes, and springs where water can
be easily obtained. Rivers and lakes can be used to irrigate
farm land.
→ Land: People choose to settle near fertile lands suitable for
agriculture.
→ Upland: Upland which is not prone to flooding was chosen to
prevent damage to houses and loss of life. Thus, in low lying
river basins people chose to settle on terraces and levees which
are “dry points”.
→ Building Material: The availability of building materials- wood,
stone near settlements is another advantage. Early villages
were built in forest clearings where wood was plentiful.
→ Defence: During the times of political instability, war, hostility
of neighbouring groups villages were built on defensive hills
and islands.
→ Planned Settlements: Sites that are not spontaneously
chosen by villagers themselves, planned settlements are
constructed by governments by providing shelter, water and
other infrastructures on acquired lands.

Rural Settlement Patterns

• It reflect the way the houses are sited in relation to each
other. The site of the village, the surrounding topography and
terrain influence the shape and size of a village.
• Rural settlements may be classified on the basis of a number
of criteria:
→ On the basis of setting: The main types are plain villages,
plateau villages, coastal villages, forest villages and desert
villages.
→ On the basis of functions: There may be farming villages,
fishermen’s villages, lumberjack villages, pastoral villages etc.
→ On the basis of forms or shapes of the settlements: These
may be a number of geometrical forms and shapes such as
Linear, rectangular, circular star like, T-shaped village, double
village, cross-shaped village etc.
(a) Linear pattern: In such settlements houses are located
along a road, railway line, river, canal edge of a valley or along
a levee.
(b) Rectangular pattern: Such patterns of rural settlements
are found in plain areas or wide inter montane valleys. The
roads are rectangular and cut each other at right angles.
(c) Circular pattern: Circular villages develop around lakes,
tanks and sometimes the village is planned in such a way that
the central part remains open and is used for keeping the
animals to protect them from wild animals.
(d) Star like pattern: Where several roads converge, star
shaped settlements develop by the houses built along the
roads.
(e) T-shaped, Y-shaped, Cross-shaped or cruciform
settlements: T -shaped settlements develop at tri-junctions of
the roads while Y-shaped settlements emerge as the places
where two roads converge on the third one and houses are
built along these roads.
(f) Double village: These settlements extend on both sides of
a river where there is a bridge or a ferry.

Problems of Rural Settlements

• Large in number and poorly equipped with infrastructure.
• Supply of water to rural settlements in developing countries is
not adequate.
• The general absence of toilet and garbage disposal facilities
cause health related problems.
• The houses made up of mud, wood and thatch, remain
susceptible to damage during heavy rains and floods, and
require proper maintenance every year.
• Unmetalled roads and lack of modern communication network
creates a unique problem.

Urban Settlements
• The first urban settlement to reach a population of one million
was the city of London by around 1810.
• Presently 54 per cent of the world’s population lives in urban
settlements.

Classification of Urban Settlements

• The definition of urban areas varies from one country to
another. Some of the common basis of classification are size of
population, occupational structure and administrative setup.

Population Size
• The lower limit of the population size for a settlement to be
designated as urban is 1,500 in Colombia, 2,000 in Argentina
and Portugal, 2,500 in U.S.A. and Thailand, 5,000 in India and
30,000 in Japan.
• In Denmark, Sweden and Finland, all places with a population
size of 250 persons are called urban.

Occupational Structure
• In Italy, a settlement is called urban, if more than 50 percent
of its economically productive population is engaged in non-
agricultural pursuits. India has set this criterion at 75 percent.

Administration
• In India, a settlement of any size is classified as urban, if it
has a municipality, Cantonment Board or Notified Area Council.
Similarly, in Latin American countries, such as Brazil and
Bolivia, any administrative centre is considered urban
irrespective of its population size.

Location
• Location of urban centres is examined with reference to their
function. For example, the sitting requirements of a holiday
resort are quite different from that of an industrial town, a
military centre or a seaport.
• Strategic towns require sites offering natural defence; mining
towns require the presence of economically valuable minerals;
industrial towns generally need local energy supplies or raw
materials; tourist centres require attractive scenery, or a
marine beach, a spring with medicinal water or historical relics,
ports require a harbour etc.
Functions of Urban Centres
• The earliest towns were centres of administration, trade,
industry, defence and religious importance.
• Today, several new functions, such as, recreational,
residential, transport, mining, manufacturing and most recently
activities related to information technology are carried on in
specialised towns.
• Large cities have a rather greater diversity of functions.
• Towns and cities are classified into the following categories:
Administrative Towns
• National capitals, which house the administrative offices of
central governments, such as New Delhi, Canberra, Beijing,
Addis Ababa, Washington D.C., and London etc. are called
administrative towns.
• Provincial (sub-national) towns can also have administrative
functions, for example, Victoria (British Columbia).

Trading and Commercial Towns

• Agricultural market towns, such as, Winnipeg and Kansas city;
banking and financial centres like Frankfurt and Amsterdam;
large inland centres like Manchester and St Louis; and transport
nodes such as, Lahore, Baghdad and Agra have been important
trading centres.

Cultural Towns
• Places of pilgrimage, such as Jerusalem, Mecca, Jagannath
Puri and Varanasi etc. are considered cultural towns. These
urban centres are of great religious importance.
• Urbanisation means the increase in the proportion population
of a country who live in urban areas. The most important cause
of urbanisation is rural-urban migration.
Classification of Towns on the Basis of Forms
• An urban settlement may be linear, square, star or crescent
shaped. Its an outcome of its historical and cultural traditions.
Addis Ababa (The New Flower)
• The whole city is located on a hill-valley topography. The road
pattern bears the influence of the local topography.
• A multi-faculty university, a medical college, a number of
good schools make Addis Ababa an educational centre.
• Bole airport is a relatively new airport.
Canberra
• Canberra was planned as the capital of Australia in 1912 by
American landscape architect, Walter Burley Griffin.
• During the last few decades, the city has expanded to
accommodate several satellite towns, which have their own
centres.
• The city has wide-open spaces and many parks and gardens.
Types of Urban Settlements
• Depending on the size and the services available and
functions rendered, urban centres are designated as town, city,
million city, conurbation, megalopolis.
Town
• Functional contrasts between towns and villages may not
always be clear- cut, but specific functions such as,
manufacturing, retail and wholesale trade, and professional
services exist in towns.
City
• A city may be regarded as a leading town, which has
outstripped its local or regional rivals.
• Cities are much larger than towns and have a greater number
of economic functions.
• They tend to have transport terminals, major financial
institutions and regional administrative offices.
Conurbation
• The term conurbation was coined by Patrick Geddes in 1915
and applied to a large area of urban development that resulted
from the merging of originally separate towns or cities.
• Greater London, Manchester, Chicago and Tokyo are
examples.
Million City
• When the population crosses the one million mark it is
designated as a million city.
• London, New York and Paris are examples.
Megalopolis
• This Greek word meaning “great city”, was popularised by
Jean Gottman (1957) and signifies ‘super- metropolitan’ region
extending, as union of conurbations.
• The urban landscape stretching from Boston in the north to
south of Washington in U.S.A. is the best known example of a
megalopolis.
Distribution of Mega Cities
• A mega city or megalopolis is a general term for cities
together with their suburbs with a population of more than 10
million people.
• New York was the first to attain the status of a mega city by
1950 with a total population of about 12.5 million. The number
of mega cities is now 31.

Problems of Human Settlements in Developing Countries

• The settlements in developing countries, suffer from various
problems, such as unsustainable concentration of population,
congested housing and streets, lack of drinking water facilities.
• They also lack infrastructure such as, electricity, sewage
disposal, health and education facilities.

Problems of Urban Settlements

• Most of the cities in the developing countries are unplanned
and they create many problems.
• Shortage of housing, vertical expansion and growth of slums
are characteristic features of modern cities of developing
countries.
• In many cities an increasing proportion of the population lives
in substandard housing, e.g. slums and squatter settlements.

Economic Problems
• The push factors from the rural areas force people to come to
the urban centres and the migrants generate a part of
unskilled/skilled labour force in the already saturated urban
areas thus leading to more unemployment and poor economic
conditions.

Socio-cultural Problems
• Insufficient financial resources fail to create adequate social
infrastructure catering to the basic needs of the huge
population.
• The available educational and health facilities remain beyond
the reach of the urban poor.
• Health also remains a problem in the cities of developing
countries.
• Lack of employment and education tends to aggravate the
crime rates.
• Male selective migration to the urban areas distorts the sex
ratio in these cities.

Environmental Problems
• The large urban population in developing countries not only
uses but also disposes off a huge quantity of water and all
types of waste materials.
• Lack of potable water as well as water for other domestic and
industrial use.
• Improper sewerage system create unhygienic condition.
• Traditional fuel create massive pollution.
• Industrial effluents and dumping of other domestic and
industrial waste create environmental hazard.
• Huge concrete structures in cities create ‘heat islands’.
• Urban-rural linkages are of crucial importance for the
sustainability of human settlements.
• Due to growth of rural population has outpaced the
generation of employment and economic opportunities, rural-
to-urban migration has steadily increased, particularly in the
developing countries, which has put an enormous pressure on
urban infrastructure and services.
• It is urgent to eradicate rural poverty and to improve the
quality of living conditions, as well as to create employment
and educational opportunities in rural settlements.

Healthy City
• World Health Organisation (WHO) suggests that, among other
things, a ‘healthy city’
must have:
→ A ’Clean’ and ‘Safe’ environment.
→ Meets the ‘Basic Needs’ of ‘All’ its inhabitants.
→ Involves the ‘Community’ in local government.
→ Provides easily accessible ‘Health’ service.

Urban Strategy
• As per UNDP, the priorities of ‘urban strategy’ are
→ Increasing shelter for urban poor.
→ Provision of basic urban services such as Education, Primary
Health Care, clean water and sanitation.
→ Improving women’s access to Basic Services and
Government facilities.
→ Upgrading ‘energy’ use and alternative ‘Transport’ systems.
→ Reducing ‘Air Pollution.