SETTLEMENTS AND SERVICE

PROVISION
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.

When discussing settlements, we will often divide them into rural and urban settlements. We also
often talk about settlements found in MEDCs and LEDCs.

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
 RURAL SETTLEMENTS
• Rural Settlements: Settlements that are found in the
countryside (rural areas) and contain less than 10,000
residents.
• 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.
 URBAN SETTLEMENTS
• Urban Settlements: Settlements that contain more than 10,000 residents
• 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.
 SETTLEMENT PATTERNS

• Dispersed: When individual buildings are

separated by several hundred meetings. They are
individual isolated buildings and do not form a
single settlement.
• Linear or Ribbon: This is a settlement that has
grown in a line. The line doesn't have to be straight,
but will normally follow a road, a river, the coast or
the valley floor.
• Nucleated: When all the houses in a settlement are
built very close together, often around a central
village green or church.
CHOOSING THE LOCATION OF A SETTLEMENT

• When the sites of settlement were first chosen, settlers would mainly
have looked for natural advantages. These may have included:

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.
 CHOOSING THE LOCATION OF A
SETTLEMENT
•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.
 Settlement Growth (Functions)
• Function: The job, purpose or use of a settlement. Large settlements
will have more than one function and these functions may change
over time. Functions may include:
• Shopping (Retail)
• Business (Commercial)
• Farming (Agricultural)
• Housing (Residential)
• Educational
• Healthcare
• Administration (local or national government)
• Fishing
• Tourism
• Entertainment
• Sporting
 SETTLEMENT HIERARCHY AND SERVICES

• Hierarchy: Placing things in an order of importance.

;Sphere of Influence: The distance or area people travel from to access a service i.e. the area
served by a settlement or service.

Services: Facilities that are offered to people e.g. supermarket, cinema, school or train station.
Services have a threshold population, which helps explain why bigger settlements have more
services.

Range: This usually refers to the number of different services e.g. a school, a post office, etc. It
can also refer to the distance people travel to access a service or settlement.
• Threshold Population: The minimum amount of people required for a service to be offered and
remain open.

High Order Goods (Comparison): Goods that people buy less frequently. They tend to be
more expensive and people will normally compare quality and price before purchasing e.g. a TV,
car or holiday.

Low Order Goods (Convenience): Goods that people buy every day. They don't usually cost
much money and people would not normally travel far to buy them e.g. bread and milk.
 SETTLEMENT HIERARCHY AND
SERVICES
• Hierarchy: The hierarchy of a settlement normally depends
on three variables:
• The size of population
• The range and number of services
• The sphere of influence
• Obviously these three variables are very much
interconnected. For services to be offered there has to be a
minimum threshold population. When services are then
offered more people are attracted. As more people are
attracted more services are offered and the sphere of
influence increases.
 SETTLEMENT HIERARCHY AND
SERVICES
• As you move down the settlement hierarchy
the number of settlements increase. For
example you only get one capital city (near the
top of the hierarchy) in each country, but you
get thousands of isolated buildings (farms -
near the bottom of the hierarchy) in every
country.
 LAND USES
• CBD: The Central Business District. This the
area in the middle of urban areas where there
tends to be a concentration of retail and
commercial land uses
• The CBD is the commercial and economic core
of the city, the area that is most accessible to
public transport and the location with the
highest land values.it has a number of
characteristics features:
CBD FEATURES
CBD FEATURES
RESIDENTIAL ZONES
RESIDENTIAL ZONES
INDUSTRIAL AREAS
RURAL URBAN FRINGE
PROBLEMS OF URBAN GROWTH
PROBLEMS OF URBAN GROWTH
CASE STUDY
CASE STUDY
CASE STUDY
URBANISATION
URBANISATION
CASE STUDY
CASE STUDY
CASE STUDY
CASE STUDY
SOLUTIONS TO URBAN PROBLEMS
SOLUTIONS TO URBAN PROBLEMS
SOLUTIONS TO URBAN PROBLEMS
SOLUTION TO URBAN PROBLEMS
SOLUTION TO URBAN PROBLEMS
SOLUTION TO URBAN PROBLEMS
SOLUTION TO URBAN PROBLEMS
• MANAGING TRANSPORT