Human Settlements - Study Notes

Lesson summary

A settlement is any form of human habitation, from a single dwelling to a large city. It includes the buildings people live in or use, the streets they travel on, and even the temporary camps of hunters and herders. A few dwelling units form hamlets; big clusters of buildings form urban cities.

Origin and development

• Most anthropologists believe humans first appeared in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa and spread to the Middle East, Asia, Europe, America and Oceania.
• The Neolithic (Agricultural) Revolution occurred in Mesopotamia; people moved from hunting-gathering to domestication.
• Agriculture succeeded in the river valleys of the Nile, Ganges and Yangtze kiang; annual floods gave fertile soil and surplus food, so the first cities arose and people specialised as priests, scribes, architects, soldiers, traders and blacksmiths.

Site factors

Situation describes a settlement in relation to other settlements and physical features; it decides whether a place grows into a large city. Birmingham, central with road links to London, has an excellent situation.

Rural and urban areas

• Rural areas: primary activities such as agriculture, low population density, few civic amenities, little occupational mobility, intimate social relations.
• Urban areas: secondary and tertiary activities, advanced civic amenities, frequent occupational mobility, complex and fast life with formal social relations.

Rural settlement patterns and types

• Compact or nucleated: houses built very close together; normal in fertile plains.
• Dispersed: houses far apart and interspersed with fields; market and some activities centralised.
• Kraal: huts arranged in a circle around a cattle corral, found among South African peoples.

Urban settlements

• Census 1991: places with a municipality, corporation, cantonment board or notified town area committee, or with at least 5000 people, at least 75 per cent of male workers in non-agricultural work and a density of at least 400 persons per sq km.
• About 48 per cent of the world's population now lives in urban settlements, against 3 per cent in 1800.
• Stages: town (over 5000), city (over 100,000), million city (over 1 million), conurbation (2 or more cities merged; Patrick Geddes, 1915), megalopolis (over 10 million; Jean Gottman, 1957; Boston to Washington).
• Million cities rose from about 80 in 1950 to 160 in 1975 and 438 in 2005.
• Urban agglomeration: a town with its outgrowths such as railway colonies, university campuses, port areas and military camps.
• Standard Urban Area (1971 Census): core town of at least 50,000; close socio-economic links; full urbanization in two to three decades.
• Ecumenopolis: a single city encompassing the whole world, a possibility of the future.

Functional classes of towns

Concentric zone theory

Ernest Burgess (1925) said a city grows outwards from a single centre in five rings, in a ripple-like fashion, if no rivers or hills distort it.

1. Zone A, C.B.D.: offices, stores, theatres, hotels, banks, civic buildings.
2. Zone B, transition: business and factories invade old houses; new migrants; urban slums.
3. Zone C, independent working men's homes: blue-collar, second generation migrants.
4. Zone D, better residence: middle and upper class, 15 to 20 minutes from the centre.
5. Zone E, commuter zone: suburbs within one hour's travel of the centre.

Urbanization of the world and India

• Urbanization is the proportion of the national population living in urban areas; urban growth is the absolute number living there.
• The UN projected that half of the world's population would be urban by the end of 2008. By 2050 about 64 per cent of the developing world and 86 per cent of the developed world will be urbanized.
• India's urban share: 11.4 per cent (1901), 28.53 per cent (2001), 31.16 per cent (2011); a UN report projects 40.76 per cent by 2030.
• Mumbai (22.1 million in 2018) is India's largest metropolis, followed by Delhi. Between 2001 and 2011 Delhi grew by 4.1 per cent, Mumbai by 3.1 per cent and Kolkata by 2 per cent.
• Urban fringe: the transition area between urban land uses and farmland, often without piped water, sewage or garbage disposal.
• Urban sprawl: spread into low-density, monofunctional, car-dependent communities (suburbanization). Causes: lower land rates, a rising standard of living, lack of urban planning, lower house tax rates, population growth and consumer preferences.

Problems of urbanization in India

India has the second largest urban population in the world after China.

1. Scarcity of space and housing: high rents lead to slums; a yearly shortage of about two million houses.
2. Inadequate social amenities: growth without real urbanisation.
3. Unemployment: about 25 per cent of urban workers are unemployed, which leads to crime.
4. Transport: narrow roads and more private vehicles cause congestion.
5. Energy crisis: peak power demand keeps rising.
6. Water supply: Kolkata 250 litres and Mumbai 175 litres per head, against 1200 litres in Los Angeles.
7. Environmental pollution: Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai discharge much of their garbage into the sea.
8. Increase in crimes: sociologists see unemployment as the main cause.

Exam tips

• Fertile plains have compact settlements, not dispersed ones.
• Geddes coined conurbation; Gottman popularized megalopolis.
• In the Burgess model B is the transition zone and E is the commuter zone.