Settlement Hierarchy: Definition &

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Instructor: Christopher Muscato

Chris has a master's degree in history and teaches at the University of Northern Colorado.

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It can be useful to understand the relationship between different places where people live. In this
lesson, we're going to explore the concept of a settlement hierarchy and see what it can teach us
about human settlements.

Settlement Hierarchy
The ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, and Mayans all developed architectural styles based around
pyramids. How did they all learn to do this? Was it aliens? No. A pyramid is simply the easiest
way to stack lots of rocks on top of each other without the roof collapsing. You start with a large
base and work your way up to a narrow pinnacle. Not only is this structure good for building, but
it's also pretty useful for categorizing information. As you may have noticed, we organize a lot of
things into pyramids (the food pyramid, the exercise pyramid, etc.). What if we need to organize
information about places where people live by size and number of services? There's a pyramid
for that too. It's called the settlement hierarchy.

Function of a Settlement Hierarchy

A settlement hierarchy is a chart used to model the relationship between various human
population centers based on their size, population, and available services. To really understand
this however, we need to first break down the term ''settlement hierarchy'' itself. A settlement is
a place where people live. Throughout human history, there have been permanent settlements
and temporary settlements, large ones and small ones. A hierarchy is a ranking of items. So, a
settlement hierarchy is a ranking of settlements. This term, used primarily in the UK, is
problematic for some people since a hierarchy can sometimes imply that the things on top are
better than things on the bottom. Keep in mind that this is not an actual goal of the settlement
hierarchy.
 Settlement hierarchy chart

What does a settlement hierarchy look like? On the bottom you have the settlement with the
lowest population and therefore the lowest number of expected services. In general, however, we
expect these to be the most commonly occurring settlements since they require less effort to
sustain. As you move up the chart, the settlements grow in size and services but also become less
frequent. So, we depict the broad and common settlements as wide bars and the large but
uncommon ones as progressively smaller bars, slowly but surely building up a pyramid of
settlements.

Levels
Isolated Place

Now, let's look at the levels of a settlement hierarchy. The base of this chart is the isolated place,
a settlement with only a few households. Isolated places require very little in the way of services
and may have none at all.

Hamlet

Above that is a slightly larger and slightly less common settlement called a hamlet. Hamlets
generally have populations of 100 people or less and might have a few very basic services.

Village

If we add a few more people and expand the borders a bit, our hamlet becomes a village.
Villages have a few hundred people, making them large enough to contain basic services like
post offices, gas stations, or churches.
Small Town & Large Town

Our next size of settlement is the small town, which has a population of between 1,000 and
20,000 people. Small towns have enough basic services that people don't have to always leave
this settlement in order to fulfill their basic needs. This means that basic stores, grocers, and
restaurants are available. When a town's population grows to be over 20,000 people, it can
become a large town and attract more varieties of these services.

City

Now we get to the levels with which many of you are probably familiar. Once a settlement's
population increases to over 100,000 people, it's officially considered a city. Cities have enough
people and space to move beyond basic services and provide facilities for leisure and recreation
as well, such as athletic arenas, concert stadiums, and other venues. They also attract more
department stores, featuring a wider range of prices since cities tend to house both the very
wealthy and very poor.

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Settlements can be described as being part of the urban hierarchy. Where they stand on the
hierarchy depends on a number of factors, the main ones being population, the number of
services a settlement has and its sphere of influence. The best way to show the urban hierarchy is
by using a pyramid, as shown in the diagram later.

Population

The most obvious way of deciding where a settlement ranks on the urban hierarchy is by using
the population of that settlement. The larger the population, the higher the settlement is placed
on the hierarchy.

In the UK, the largest city in terms of population is London, which most people would agree is
the most important settlement in the country and so deserves to be placed on the top of the urban
hierarchy for the UK.

After that the divisions between what is classified in each layer is a bit more vague. Different
sources will have different numbers for how many people are needed for a place to be called a
city rather than a town for instance.

However the most important thing to notice on the diagram is that as you go up the hierarchy,
there becomes a lot less of that type of settlement. So, the diagram shows us that there are huge
numbers of isolated farmhouses and hamlets. There are less villages and small towns and so on.

In the UK, many people would argue that only London should be placed in the highest rung of
the triangle. However some other large cities, such as Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds are
growing fast, and may be considered to have reached the top level as well.
Services and functions

Services are things such as retailers(shops), professionals (doctors, lawyers etc), entertainment,
government functions and leisure. The theory goes that the larger a settlement is, and therefore
the higher it is on the urban hierarchy, the more services and functions it will have.

In general in the UK, this is the case. London is the settlement at the top of the urban hierarchy,
and it has the greatest numbers of services and functions of any settlement in the country. For
instance, it has the major international airports, it is the seat of our national government, it has
the widest range of shops, including very specialist ones, and it has the most renowned
professional services. This is because its population is large enough to support all of the services.

A small village may on the other hand only have the population to support a pub, post office,
village store and perhaps a small garage.
Villages and other rural settlements have found over the last 20 years that it has been
increasingly hard for services to remain viable in these settlements. Small post offices and banks
have frequently been closed down, as there aresimply not enough people using them to make
them viable.

The number of services (functions) that a town provides normally relatesto the number of
people living there.

There are however, two noted anomalies. These are examples of settlements that do not
conform to the general pattern, and they are explained below:

Anomaly A: A Tourist town: Towns, such as Brighton, Blackpool and Eastbourne, that have
grown due to the tourist industry, often have more services than their population suggests they
should have. This is because many of their services are catering for the huge numbers of tourists
who flood into the towns during the summer months. Hotels, guesthouses, restaurants, beach
shops and ice cream stalls all are aimed to provide services for the tourists.

The extra tourist numbers swell the total population during the summer to a level that is more
appropriate for the number of services provided.

Anomaly B: A Commuter Settlement: Many rural villages are becoming commuter centres,
where people live, but work elsewhere. Many villages and towns around the London area fulfil
this function.

Commuter settlements have a large resident population, but as very few of them actually work
in the village, there is nobody to support any services. The commuters will do their shopping and
banking in the city where they work. This means that these settlements will have fewer services
than their population suggests they should have. Some commuter settlements are changing their
services to cater for the different residents, with restaurants and cafes replacing the traditional
village services.

Sphere of influence

The sphere of influence of a settlement describes the area that is served by a settlement, for a
particular function. Its sphere of influence for different functions may cover vastly different
areas. For instance a supermarket may attract people from a 20-mile radius, whilst a leisure
activity, such as going to the theatre may attract them from far further away.

The larger a settlement is the greater its sphere of influence is likely to be, as it has a wider range
of services and functions to attract people to go there. This is shown in the diagram below. A
small village may only have a village store selling the daily newspaper and food such as bread
and milk. People will only travel the shortest distance they need to buy these products. They are
described as being convenience goods. In other words, something that you can buy easily and
for the same price all over the place.

A larger town would have a wider sphere of influence because it would have shops and services
that are more specialist, and so people would be willing to travel further to use them. An
example might be a furniture shop. This sells comparison goods, in other words products that
you might shop around for before going ahead and buying something.

There are two major ideas to consider when looking at the sphere of influence of a shop of
service. These are called the range and threshold population of a good.

The range of a good or service describes the maximum distance that someone would be willing
to travel to obtain that good or service. A newspaper shop has a small range because people will
not travel far to use them. A cinema has a much wider range as people are prepared to travel
much further to go to it.

The threshold population of a good or service is the minimum number of people needed to
allow that shop or service to be successful. The more specialist a shop is the larger its threshold
population is.
A newsagent will have a small threshold, where as a supermarket like Tesco's needs a much
larger population before it can consider opening a store.

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