DATE

LECTURER MS MANZOU
TOPIC SETTLEMENT STUDIES

 Definition
 A place where people dwell on a more or less permanent basis and is marked by various
forms of shelter.

 A settlement could be anything from an isolated farmhouse to a mega city.

 Factors influencing location of settlements

 Relief
 Soils
 Climate
 Political factors
 Economical condition
 social interactions
 Available resources
 Classification of settlements

Settlements can be classified according to:

 Location
 Function
 Pattern and form
 Size
 Theory by using models e.g. rank size rule and the central place theory
 Location
 Site- the actual area on which a settlement is located e.g. Hilltop, valley or island
 Situation-describes where a place is in relation to the physical and human factors such as
rivers, uplands and other neighbouring settlement

 Applicable to rural areas that developed long ago

 Factors influencing settlement site
 Wet point settlements – settlements close to water supply such as spring and desert oasis
settlements

 Dry point –these are sites that avoided the risk of flooding - high ground especially in
marshlands and areas prone to flooding

 Transport point – settlements that develop on gaps bridges, route centres and coastal areas
for transport

 Defence – e.g. Hilltop settlements

 aspect - many settlements in the northern hemisphere are located on south facing sides of
valleys where it is sunny

 shelter - away from rain and prevailing winds

 trading point - often settlements developed where natural training points meet such as
along rivers or natural route ways
 resources - many settlements developed close to where natural resources could be found.

 Settlement function
 Refers to the dominant social or economic activity in the settlement
 Functions can change over time e.g. Fishing villages now ports

 Most cities are multi-functional

 The following functional classification can be identified:

Administrative towns
 have houses of parliament, embassies ,headquarters of ministries and NGOS, provincial
offices

 These may usually be capital cities e.g. Harare, Lilongwe in Malawi and Washington DC
in ASA

Manufacturing towns
 have dominant industrial activities e.g. Detroit-car manufacturing, Gweru –shoe industry

Resort/recreational town
 Main activity involves housing tourists and offering entertainment to visitors e.g. Victoria
Falls, Miami Beach

Cultural centres
 Have maintained their cultural history e.g. Rome(religion), Oxford (education), Mecca,
Jerusalem

Mining towns
 Developed to extract and process minerals
 May later develop into manufacturing centres
 E.gs copper belt of Zambia , Hwange, Zvishavane
Market towns
 Characterised by departmental shops retail shops,
 Develop in agricultural areas to market the produce e.g.chiredzi –sugar, Kadoma –cotton
and maize

Defence towns
 Characterised by barracks, training facilities and firms which manufacture arms

Route/nodal centres
 Usually ports or towns developing where the is break of bulk point or different routes meet
e.g. Beira, Durban, Gweru, Bulawayo

Residential/dormitory
 Developed to house people, characterised by flats, houses, e.g. Chitungwiza, Soweto,
Zimunya
 Problems-functional classification
 Scarce data about the number of people in each sector

 Function of cities may vary with time

 Some cites are multi-functional

 Classification according to pattern/form
 Mainly concerned with morphology of rural settlements:

Isolated
 Individual buildings mainly in areas of extreme physical conditions e.g. rainforest, desert,
cold areas very dry areas, rugged terrain
Dispersed
 Common in rural farming areas where settlements are homesteads for individuals or groups
of families in farms

Nucleated
 Buildings are grouped together for defence or economic purposes

Linear
 Settlement follow a line of communication, river or canal, foot of a mountain or maybe a
result of government planning.

Circular/ring
 Roads radiate from a centre may be a village green

T-junction
 Develop at a road junction, maybe a T or Y junction

Crossroads
 Develops where roads meet, maybe crossing over a river

 Classification according to size

 Using physical size a settlement hierarchy can be developed

Isolated
 A farm house in the country side

Hamlet
 A small collection of houses or huts possibly with a church
 20- 30 houses and less than 100 people
 Trade-lower order goods and services e.g. store, church

Village
 Much larger than a hamlet
 Supports a wider range of services- a church, general store primary/secondary school,
clinic

Business centre
 Services include, retail shops, primary/secondary schools, post office, supermarkets

Rural service centre

 Larger than a service centre

 Serve up to 1000 people
 Have a radius of about 20 km
 Can support primary/secondary schools, churches, bus terminus, informal industries

District service centres

 largest on the rural hierarchy

 Some of them have become growth points
 Services provided include, all those provided by rural service centres plus services
provided by governments e.g. Provincial hospitals , agritex offices, council offices ,banks
 Growth points/poles

 Areas chosen for development by the government with the idea that these areas may grow
and expand and spread development in surrounding areas
 Came as a result of developing the peripheral regions which were lagging behind core
regions in terms of development

 Decentralisation strategy to reduce rural –urban migration

 Areas with resources were chosen e.g. minerals, fertile agricultural lands

 Once the resources were exploited, industries would develop which would create
employment and service these regions
 Aims of the growth point strategy
 Government decentralisation policy
 Reduce rural-urban migration
 Develop peripheral areas in terms of infrastructure
 Create employment
 Create markets for the rural areas
 Opening up of industries
 Provision of services to rural areas
 Improving living standards in rural areas
 TASK
 Evaluate the growth point strategy as a way of improving the living standards of rural
Zimbabweans;

 Town
Several buildings found including churches , cathedral, various specialist shops, industrial
activities, recreational facilities
City
• Has a larger population than a town
• Has greater number of functions, major financial institutions, more administrative
functions

Conurbation
 Formed when towns merge to form a large urban built up area

 Megalopolis
 A multi-city urban area e.g. BOSHWASH megalopolis in USA.- extends for 1000km

 Classification according to population size

Rank size rule
 If all the settlements of a country are ranked according to population size, the size of a
settlement will be inversely proportional to their rank

 If all cities in a country are placed in order from the largest to the smallest, each one will
have a population half the size of the preceding city

 The aim of the rank size rule is to find regularities concerning the characteristics of
settlements in one country and to fit a graphical description of size distributions .
 Rank size rule theory
 Put forward by Zipf (1949) after studying various countries

 Observed common characteristics which have been called the rank size rule

 The rank size rule is an empirical regularity

 The town’s population is derived by;

 Pr = Pl/r
 where Pr =population of rth rank
Pl =populn of largest city
r = rank of the city

 The second ranking city has ½ the population of the largest city

 The third largest city has 1/3 the population of the largest city

 Size of particular town can be predicted

 By observing its rank and the size of the largest city.

 Settlements within a defined area are ranked in descending order(size of population)

 Rank size rule pattern

 If such a perfect negative relationship occurred, a smooth concave curve would result on
an arithmetic graph

 Theoretical pattern is a straight line sloping downwards on a logarithmic graph

 Variations in the rank size rule
 In urban primacy- single city dominates e.g. Montevideo in Uruguay is 17 times larger
than the second largest city

 Binary pattern – two very large cities in a country of almost the same size e.g. Madrid and
Barcelona in Spain
 Rank size rule likely to operate
 If the country is developed
 Has been urbanised for a long time

 Is large in size

 Has a complex and stable economy

 Urban primacy
 Term coined by Jefferson (1989) in his law of primacy, ‘the primate city is commonly at
least twice as large as the next largest city and twice as significant’

 Works as a financial, political and population centre

 Must be at least twice as much populous as the largest city

 Main causes of primacy

 Small area in both area and population size

 Countries with low per capita incomes

 Agricultural based economies

 former colonies where cities grew as collecting or administrative centres

 Countries with short history of urbanisation

 Island countries

 countries with extreme climate and physical conditions e.g. deserts and rainforest
 Countries with simple unstable economies
 Advantages of primate cities
 decision making is faster and easier

 Large markets attract foreign investors

 Attractive places of migration

 Resources , infrastructure available on a large scale

 Problems of primacy
 Urban-rural inequalities

 Increases in land values

 Imbalances in development- lagging periphery and progressive core

 Centralisation of power

 Pollution

 Traffic congestion etc

 task
 With reference to one named city in the LEDCs suggest solutions to the problems caused
by primacy.