Settlement
Date: 2015-10-07; view: 514.
· Settlement: A place where people live. A settlement can range from one an isolated building to a capital city of over 20 million people (e.g. Mexico City).
· Site: The actual location or place that a settlement is built.
· Situation: The area surrounding the site of a settlement. For example you might talk about if the settlement is near a river, or near the coast or in a valley surrounded by mountains.
· Urban: The built up area, any city with a population of 10,000 people or more.
· Rural: Basically the countryside (everywhere outside urban areas). Rural areas maybe farmland, forest, desert or savanna depending on where you are in the world. Rural areas do contain small settlements of less than 10,000 people e.g. hamlets and villages.
· MEDC: More economically developed country. Basically a richer country e.g. US, Japan or UK
· LEDC: Less economically developed country. Basically a poorer country e.g. Honduras, Uganda or Bangladesh
| Types of Rural settlements | Types of urban settlements |
| · Isolated Building: A single building. An isolated building is normally a farm. · Hamlet: A small group of houses, normally about 5 to 10. There is often no services in a hamlet. · Village: A settlement of up to 10,000 people. Villages will have some services in them like small shops, a primary school, a doctors surgery, bus routes. | · Town: A settlement of over 10,000 people that has not be designated a city. · City: A large town, in the UK a town becomes a city when it has a cathedral in it. · Capital City: The main administrative centre within a country and the home of the national government. · Primate City: The largest and most important city within a country. The primate city will often have double the population of the next most important city. Most of the time the primate city is also the capital city, but there are some famous exceptions e.g. New York, Sydney and Sao Paolo. · Conurbation: Two or more towns or cities that have joined to together e.g. Birmingham, Walsall, Dudley and Wolverhampton in England. Megaopolis: A conurbation or a clustering of cities with a population of over 10 million people e.g. Tokyo. |
· Water supply: Water is essential when building a settlement. You need water to drink, to wash, to water crops and to cook. Water also contains fish that can be eaten and it can be used as a transport route.
· Fertile land: All settlements need food so it is important to build need fertile soil, where it is possible to grow crops. If a settlement grows a surplus of food then they might be able to trade with neighbouring settlements.
· Flat land (relief): It is a lot easier to build a settlement on flat land than in mountains.
· Defensive position: When sites for settlements were first chosen (hundreds or thousands of years ago), battles between settlements would have been common, therefore a good defensive location (on a small hill or surrounded by water) would have been very important.
· Building materials: Most houses would have traditionally been made out of woods, reeds, etc. Therefore it would have been very important to have been located near a source of building materials.
· Transport links: There wouldn't have been roads and railways when the sites of settlements were initially selected. However, access to rivers, the sea or valleys would have been very important. If the settlement was built next to a river, a site that allowed easy access across the river would have been chosen.
· Fuel: Settlements would not have had electricity or gas so a location next to a reliable source of fuel would be essential. The fuel source would normally be wood, or possibly peat.
· Weather: Sites with fairly stable weather will have been selected. You do not want some where too hot or too cold, too wet, too dry or too windy. To grow crops sun and rain would have been very important.
· Trading Location: Settlements may have also been built for their access to trading routes. It would be very hard for one settlement to be totally self-sufficient so trade was essential. Coastal areas often make good locations to trade from.
· Resources: It is useful being near resources like wood, coal, gold because you can use them to build things or trade with nearby settlements.
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