 A settlement is a place where people

live.
 Settlement is a place where people live
and interact through activities such as
agriculture, trading and entertainment.
 Help us to understand man’s
relationship with his environment.
 An isolated farmhouse to a mega city
 Rural settlements are generally small.
 Sparsely populated
 Low population density
 Poor transport
 Poor communication
 Less technology
 Predominantly primary activities such as
farming, lumbering and mining.
 Tourism.
  Compact Settlement
 Semi-Compact Settlement
 Dispersed Settlement
 A compact settlement is based on farming.
 These are mostly found in highly productive alluvial
plains.
 The houses are compact and congested with narrow
plains.
 The size of these settlements depends on nature and
resources of surrounding country.
 They have a high degree of segregation and
differentiation of the upper and lower social group.
 Compact settlements are also found in hunting and
fishing communities.
 Semi-Compact is a transitional phase in the growth
of compact settlement.
 The emergence is because of the difference of
semi-arid regions from humid regions and
marginal productive land to that of fertile land.
 Increase in population cause villages to grow in
number of houses.
 These houses occupy open spaces and lead to
semi-compact settlement which ultimately
acquires a nucleated settlement.
 Generally found in hills, plateaus and
grasslands.
 These are found in areas where it is essential
that the farmer should live on his own land.
 Overpopulation is one of the reasons for
dispersed settlement.
 If a part of the population left a village to
found a new one they often found dispersed
rather than a new village.
 Pattern of settlement is defined as the relationship
between one house or building to another.
 It can be identified by reading and observing a local
scale map.
 The patterns of settlement deals with compact and
semi-compact only, as dispersed has its own
shape.
 The socio cultural factors like social group structure
or a functional need of people has a close bearing
on its shape and size.
 The rural settlements are classified under following
patterns:
 Rectangular
 Linear
 Circular
 Semi-circular
 Star-like
 Triangular
 Nebular Pattern
 The settlements is linear in valleys and
mountainous areas
 Rectangular in fertile plains
 Circular near the lakes and ponds
 Triangular at cross roads and in
exceptional cases it resembles the
nebular form
 On river terraces it is star-type.
 As you move up the hierarchy, the size of the
settlement and the distance between similar sized
settlements increases.
 As you can see from the diagram above, there are
more cities than conurbations, more towns than cities
and more villages than towns.
 The number of services that a settlement provides
increases with settlement size.
 Small settlements will only provide low-order
services such as a post offices, doctors and
newsagents.
 Large towns, cities and conurbations will provide low
and high-order services such as leisure centers, chain
stores and hospitals.
 Larger settlements and conurbations have a much
larger sphere of influence than smaller ones.
 This means they attract people from a wider area
because of the facilities they offer.
 Cities such as London have a global sphere of
influence, whereas a small hamlet or village may
only have a sphere of influence of a couple of
kilometers.
 Services such as department stores selling high order
goods have a higher threshold than those selling low
order goods such as newsagents.
 This means they need a higher number of people to
support them and make them profitable, therefore
they will only be found in larger settlements.
 It also means that there are fewer big department
stores than small newsagents.
 The range of a service or product is the maximum
distance people are prepared to travel to purchase it.
 The range of a newspaper is much lower than an item
of furniture for example.
 Job losses
 House price increases
 New homes
 Competition from abroad
 Rural depopulation
 Decline in services
 Urbanization refers to the increasing number of
people that live in urban areas.
 It predominantly results in the physical growth of
urban areas, be it horizontal or vertical.
 The United Nations projected that half of the
world's population would live in urban areas at the
end of 2008.
 By 2050 it is predicted that 64.1% and 85.9% of the
developing and developed world respectively will
be urbanized.
 Urbanization is closely linked to modernization,
industrialization, and the sociological process of
rationalization.
 Urbanization began during the Industrial
Revolution between the 18th-19th centuries.
 This has lead to mechanization in farming, so a lot
of farmers migrated to urban areas for higher
chances of employments in factories.
 MDCs have continued to grow between the 19th-
20th century.
 More people are attracted to specialist services and
leisure activities therefore more people are willing
to move into the city.
 People in the MDCs are also wealthier, meaning
they can afford better standard of transportation,
housing and job opportunities which pulls more
people to the urban areas.
 The rate of urbanization in MDCs has grown from
53% to 74% in the 20th century.
 However, since 1950, urbanization has slowed
down in most MDCs, and some of the biggest cities
are losing population as people move away from
the city to the suburbs (Counter-Urbanization).
 Urbanization in LDCs started during the 1950s and
is still going on today.
 LDCs in Asia, Africa and Latin America are growing
most swiftly.
PUSH FACTORS PULL FACTORS
 Crop Failures  Better paid jobs
 Natural Disasters  Reliable food
 Unemployment supply
 Lack of basic  More services
amenities
 More
 Overcrowded
 Bad healthcare governmental
help
 Collapsing Infrastructure
 Increasing levels of pollution
 Inadequate housing and services
 Transportation
 The shanty town is likely to be found on
inappropriate land
 The services will be non-existent or incapable
of maintaining a basic standard of living
 A lack of employment means that people
have to look for other ways of earning money
 Housing
 Social
 Recreation
 Public health
 Unemployment
 Rank size rule: zipf’s observed the size and number
of settlements in various countries.
 He noticed a common characteristic which has
been called the rank-size rule.
 The rank-size rule is an empirical regularity.
 The main aim of the rank-size rule is to find
regularities concerning the characteristics of
settlements in various countries, and to fit a
graphical description to the size distribution of
cities.
 The rank size rule

 The settlements within a defined area are ranked in

descending order according to the size of their
population
 The size of a particular town can be predicted by
observing its rank and the size of the largest city in
the area
 The town’s population is derived by dividing the
largest city’s population by the town’s rank
 A primate city is one which far out-ranks all other
cities of the country in which it is located, in terms
of population, commercial activities, industrial
output and political influences.
Primate Cities Second Cities Largest Second
Paris (9.6) Marseilles (1.3) Cities Cities
London (7) Birmingham (1) Mumbai Kolkata
(16) (13 )
Mexico City (8.6) Guadalajara (1.6)
New York Los
Bangkok (7.5) Nanthaburi City (21) Angeles
(481,000) (16)
 First introduced by Mark Jefferson in 1939.
 He studied 46 countries of the world and found
that the largest cities were two or three times as
large as next largest city.
 The law of the primate city is mainly applicable to
agricultural based, developing countries. It will
show the following characteristics:
 Small territorial extent
 Relatively high population densities
 Low per capita income
 Spread of colonialism
 Strong centralized government
 Economic factors
 Industrial agglomeration
 Rural-urban migration
 Efficiency of modern transport
 Suburbanization is a term used to describe the
growth of areas on the fringes of major cities.
 Sudden and extreme relocation out of urban areas
into the suburbs is one of the many causes of urban
sprawl, as suburbs grow to accommodate the
increasingly large population.
 Many residents of suburbs still work within the
central urban area, choosing instead to live in the
suburbs and commute to work.
Suburbanization is caused by many
factors that are typically classified into
push and pull factors.
Push factors
 Tired of city life  lower-class
 Overpopulated  crime-ridden
 Over-polluted  Real estate law
 Dirty
 Pull factors
 More open spaces
 The perception of being closer to nature
 Lower suburban house prices
 Lower property taxes
 Development of infrastructure
 Insurance policies favoring suburban
areas
 Urban sprawl
Congestion
Air pollution
 Urban sprawl is basically another word for
urbanization.
 It refers to the migration of a population from
populated towns and cities to low density
residential development over more and more rural
land.
 The end result is the spreading of a city and its
suburbs over more and more rural land.
 In other words, urban sprawl is defined as low
density residential and commercial development
on undeveloped land.
 Lower Land Rates
 Improved Infrastructure
 Rise in Standard of Living
 Lack of Urban Planning
 Lower House Tax Rates
 Rise in Population Growth
 Consumer Preferences
 Counter-urbanization is the process where
people migrate from major urban areas to
more rural settlements (i.e. market towns
and villages) because they don’t like living in
big cities.
 The growth in the internet and
communications technology has allowed this
movement as well as the building of
motorways and the growth in car ownership.
 Higher rates of congestion and pollution
 High land
 Higher crime rates
 More people tend to move when they retire.
 New business parks on the edge of cities
 People now prefer to live on the outskirts of the
city to be near where they work.
 The increase in car ownership
 The growth in information technology (E-mail,
faxes and video conferencing) means more people
can work from home.
 Perceived better quality of life
 Believed to be a safer and more pleasant
environment for children to grow up in
 Less pollution and more open space
 Lower land-values and more affordable
housing
 Improvements in transports
 Improvement in technology
 changing characteristics of many villages
 increase in population becoming more
sub-urbanized in character.
 housing developments
 business units have developed
 Village shops and local services often
suffer
 social impacts
 Traffic congestion on rural roads
 Re-urbanization: “The process whereby
towns and cities in MEDCs which have
been experiencing a loss of population are
able to reverse the decline and begin to
grow again.
 Some form of redevelopment is often
required to start re-urbanization”
 “Movement of people into the city centre
or inner-city as part of urban regeneration”
 Movement of individuals or groups
into older housing and gentrification
occurs
 ‘Large scale’ investment
programmes aimed at urban
regeneration
 A move towards ‘Sustainable
communities’
 This is where housing is improved by
individuals/ groups.
 Mostly affluent (those working in
professional/managerial jobs) who carry
this out
 It is NOT supported by bodies but
encouraged by housing estate agents
 POSITIVES NEGATIVES
 Social mix of the area  Local people on low
changes with more income find it difficult to
affluent afford housing
 Increase in bars,  Private rented
restaurants and services accommodation is sold off
 The residents have higher and reduces
purchasing power  Friction between incomers
 Employment created and original residents
 A model is a theoretical framework which may
not actually exist, but which helps to explain the
reality.
 It has been suggested that towns do not grow in
a haphazard way, but rather they tend to
develop with recognizable shapes and patterns.
 As cities grew in area and population in the 20th
century, geographers and sociologists tried to
identify and explain variations in spatial
patterns.
 These patterns, which may show differences
and similarities in land use and/or social
groupings within a city, reflect how various
urban areas evolved economically and socially
in response to changing conditions over a
period of time.
 While each cities had its own distinctive pattern
or patterns, studies of other urban areas
showed that they too often have exhibited
similar patterns.
The main functional zones identified
in the models are:
 CBD
 Light manufacturing
 Heavy manufacturing
 Lower income housing
 Middle income housing
 High income housing
 Having made in depth studies of the morphology
of Chicago in the 1920's, Burgess concluded that
city land-use could be identified as a series of
concentric rings around the CBD.
 The CBD will contain all the major shops and
offices and be a centre of entertainment.
 Surrounding this CBD will be the oldest housing,
which is in a state of deterioration. Industry will
also feature in this area.
 This is the area often referred to as the inner city or
'zone of transition‘.
 Then, we get three rings of housing.
 The first will be high density, poor quality
that traditionally houses the workers for the
factories.
 Next, is slightly lower density, middle class
housing. These will be semi-detached with
gardens.
 Finally, there is a ring of high class housing
for those who can afford to commute.
 The city was built on flat land which therefore
gave equal advantages in all directions, i.e.
morphology features such as river valleys were
removed.
 Transport systems were of limited significance
being equally easy, rapid and cheap in every
direction.
 Land values were highest in the center of the
city and declined rapidly outwards to give a
zoning of urban functions and land use.
 The oldest buildings were in, or close to the city
center.
 Buildings became progressively newer towards the
city boundary.
 Cities contained a variety of well-defined socio-
economic and ethnic areas.
 The poorer classes had to live near to the city
centre and places of work as they could not afford
transport or expensive housing.
 There were no concentrations of heavy industry.
 The Central Business District (CBD) contains the
major shops and offices; it is the centre for
commerce and entertainment, and the focus for
transport routes.
 The transition or twilight zone is where the oldest
housing is either deteriorating into slum property
or being ‘invaded’ by light industry.
 The inhabitants tend to be of poorer social groups
and first-generation immigrants.
 Areas of low-class housing are occupied
by those who have ‘escaped’ from zone
2, or by second-generation immigrants
who work in nearby factories. They are
compelled to live near to their place of
work to reduce travelling cost and rent.
 In modern Britain, these zones are
equated with the inner cities.
 Medium-class housing of higher quality
which, in present-day Britain, would
include inter-war private semi-detached
houses and council estates.
 High-class housing occupied by people
who can afford the expensive properties
and the high cost of commuting.
 Hoyt proposed his model after the development of
public transport.
 He suggested that urban areas developed in
sectors, or wedges, alongside main transport
routes into and out of a city.
 He also claimed that if, for example, industry and
low cost housing developed in one part of a town in
the 19th century, then newer industry and modern
low-cost housing would also locate in the same
sector.
 Hoyt made the same implicit assumptions as had
Burgess, with addition three new factors:
 Wealthy people, who could afford the highest rates.
Chose the best sites, i.e. competition based on ‘ability
to pay’ resolved land use conflicts.
 Wealthy residents could afford private cars or public
transport and so lived further from industry and nearer
to main roads.
 Similar land uses attracted other similar land uses,
concentrating a function in a particular area and
repelling others.
 This process led to a ‘sector’ development.
 This model was aimed at being more specific
than the other two, however it also has become
more complicated.
 Harris and Ullman still have a central CBD, but
they also have other smaller centers performing
specific functions that Hoyt and Burgess
decided would have been found in and around
the CBD.
 Thus Harris & Ullman also have a business
centre, and industrial parks.
 Modern cities have a more complex structure
than that suggested by Burgess and Hoyt.
 Cities do not grow from one CBD, but from
several independent nuclei.
 Each nucleus acts as a growth point, and
nuclei within the city.
 In London, the city is financial
 Westminster is government and
administration
 Dockland was industrial.
 In time, there will be an outward growth from
each nucleus until they merge as one large
urban center
 If the city becomes too large and congested,
some functions may be dispersed to new nuclei.
 Multiple nuclei developed as a response to the
need for maximum accessibility to a centre, to
keep certain types of land use apart, for
differences in land values and, more recently, to
decentralize.
 Burgess Hoyt Ullman/Harris
Zones, in reality, are never as clear-cut as shown on each model
Each zones usually contains more than one type of land use/housing
No consideration of characteristics of cities outside USA and North-west Europe

Based on cities in economically more

Based on 1 USA city Based on 142 USA cities
developed world

Redevelopment schemes and modern edge-of-city development are not included (most of the
models pre-date these developments)

Based mainly on housing: other types of land use

neglected

Cities not always built upon flat plains

Tended to ignore transport
There are some basic problems with applying these
models to urban land use in developing countries:
 Urban growth has been much more recent and
rapid in developing countries than in developed
countries of the previous centuries.
 Economic development and diversification as
lagged far behind the demands of urbanization in
developing countries.
 Colonial history created distinct ‘new and old’
sectors of many cities with almost parallel and
distinct economies and land use.
 Assumptions about availability of individual and/or
mass transport are often not applicable to cities in
the developing countries.
 Greater government/planning controls on urban
land use in developing countries than in developed
countries in the past.
 Many cities in developing countries have large
illegal squatter settlements in extreme poverty.
 Many areas of cities in developing countries are
multifunctional with the lack of specialization
proposed by the models.
In both MDCs and LDCs similar solutions have been
tried with varying success. These include:
 Construction of new towns.
 Decentralization of services on economic activity.
 Demolition of areas of urban decay.
 Improving facilities in rural areas.
 Redevelopment of some urban areas.
 Self help initiatives – for example, to improve
housing.
 Limiting traffic into cities by road pricing, road
space rationing, park and ride facilities.