Full Answer
How did the pattern of human settlement develop?
During the last hundred years the pattern of human settlement has developed towards "megalopolis" in the one hand and "vast emptiness" on the other. The availability of cheap and plentiful fossil fuel has made this possible, writes E F Schumacher. He points out that the present pattern may have
Why is the study of human settlement important in geography?
You may call it a village, a city or a town; all are patterns of human settlements. The study of human settlements is essential to human geography because the form of settlement in any particular region reflects a human relationship with the environment. A human settlement is defined as a region populated more or less permanently.
How do settlement patterns change through time?
Settlement patterns change through time. Cities, the largest and densest human settlements, are the major nodes of human society. Throughout the world, cities are growing rapidly, but none so rapidly as those in developing regions. Urbanization is changing the current patterns of both rural and urban landscapes around the world.
What is the definition of human settlement?
A human settlement is defined as a region populated more or less permanently. The houses may be planned or redesigned, buildings may be remodelled, functions may change, but settlement continues in space and time. There may be some settlements which are unstable and are occupied for short periods, even a season.
Why is the study of human settlements important?
What is compact settlement?
What are some examples of planned settlements?
What factors influence the location of rural settlements?
What are the benefits of a wet point settlement?
What is the pattern of a circular village?
What are the activities of rural settlements?
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What is the pattern of settlement?
A settlement pattern refers to the way that buildings and houses are distributed in a rural settlement. Settlement patterns are of interest to geographers, historians, and anthropologists for the insight they offer in how a community has developed over time.
What does human settlement patterns mean?
A human settlement is a place where people live. Settlement patterns describe the ways in which villages, towns, cities and First Nation reserves are distributed, as well as the factors that influence this arrangement.
What are the types of human settlement patterns?
Settlements are usually formed around a key resource and have a history from people settling together in a region. The four main types of settlements are urban, rural, compact, and dispersed.
What is the form of human settlement?
Human settlements can broadly be divided into two types – rural and urban. Rural settlements: Rural settlements are most closely and directly related to land. They are dominated by primary activities such as agriculture, animal husbandry, fishing etc. The settlements size is relatively small.
What are the settlement types?
Rural settlements in India can broadly be put into four types: • Clustered, agglomerated or nucleated, • Semi-clustered or fragmented, • Hamleted, and • Dispersed or isolated.
What is an example of a settlement?
An example of a settlement is when divorcing parties agree on how to split up their assets. An example of a settlement is when you buy a house and you and the sellers sign all the documents to officially transfer the property. An example of settlement is when the colonists came to America.
What are the 3 settlement patterns?
Population settlement patterns can be separated into to three distinct patterns: Linear. Clustered (or nucleated) Scattered.
What are the 4 types of settlement patterns?
Rural settlement patterns refer to the shape of the settlement boundaries, which often involve an interaction with the surrounding landscape features. The most common patterns are linear, rectangular, circular or semi-circular, and triangular.
What are the 5 types of settlements?
There are 5 types of settlement classified according to their pattern, these are, isolated, dispersed, nucleated, and linear.
What are 2 types of settlements?
Settlement is a place where people live and carry out various economic activities on a relatively permanent basis. It can be divided into two types: rural settlement and urban settlement. The two types of settlement are differentiated by their size, density of population and employment pattern.
How many human settlements are there?
What are the types of human settlements? There are three types of human settlements that humans have used historically and in the modern age. They are rural human settlements, urban human settlements, and suburban human settlements.
What is the significance of human settlement?
There are many purposes or functions of human settlements. Four functions of human settlements include protection, pooling economics, sharing natural resources, and socioemotional connection.
What are the 3 types of settlement patterns?
There are generally three types of settlements: compact, semi-compact, and dispersed.
What factors affect human settlement?
Factors can be push or pull....Physical FeaturesBody of water (transportation routes, water for drinking and farming)Flat land (easy to build)Fertile soil (for crops)Forests (timber and housing)
What are the different types of human settlements explain each with proper examples?
In scattered settlements , houses are few and far from each other. The Nucleated settlements are generally close to water sources like brooks, rivulets, rivers, lakes, reservoirs etc and Linear settlements are seen along roads, railways, rivers, sea coast and foothill region etc.
What is settlement pattern?
Settlement pattern and landscape approaches are central to the mission of contemporary archaeology. Through archaeological surveys, they provide a regional perspective on behavioral change that has been key to the transition from normative to populational perspectives on the past. Although these studies have had the greatest impact on our understanding of arid and semiarid areas, they have been employed under a range of conditions. There is no correct way to survey; however, methodological procedures and analytical strategies must be guided by environmental conditions, available resources, and research goals. The most successful studies to date have been those in which significant and sustained time and labor investments have been made.
What are the needs of human settlement?
Human settlement has always been directed by the needs of individuals and societies, such as the need for food, water, defense, and access to commerce . Almost without exception, increased natural hazard risk has been assumed in favor of these needs, often as result of a confidence that hazard risk can be accepted as “part of life” or can be effectively managed. Evidence of such behavior is apparent in almost any example of previous human settlement: communities along rivers build levees; those located along the sea coasts construct sea walls and jetties; farmers place their houses and sow their crops upon the fertile slopes of active volcanoes.
How did the islands of the Holocene affect biodiversity?
Hence, biodiversity on these islands was poor, along with difficult water supply, lower soil fertility, and a greater isolation relative to the volcanic islands. By contrast, volcanic islands were particularly fertile, with good water supplies, although there may have been an issue of malaria present in inland mountainous areas. The overall comforts of the volcanic islands may have been a reason for an apparent later settlement of more easterly lying coral islands compared to the western, mainly volcanic, islands.
Why is settlement pattern important?
The settlement pattern makes clear why good stratigraphy was obtained in what is normally a difficult context, that of a stratified series of villages. The reason is that, once abandoned, structures were never disturbed . Burials within the structures were also never drastically disturbed; abandoned houses were abandoned household cemeteries.
How long has the Solomon Islands been inhabited?
All areas outside of Australia, Papua New Guinea, and parts of the Solomon Islands (so-called ‘near-Oceania’) have been habited for <3500 years ( see Australia ).
What is the Global Human Settlement Layer?
The Global Human Settlement Layer ( GHSL) framework produces global spatial information about the human presence on the planet over time. This in the form of built up maps, population density maps and settlement maps. This information is generated with evidence-based analytics and knowledge using new spatial data mining technologies. The framework uses heterogeneous data including global archives of fine-scale satellite imagery, census data, and volunteered geographic information. The data is processed fully automatically and generates analytics and knowledge reporting objectively and systematically about the presence of population and built-up infrastructures. The GHSL operates in an open and free data and methods access policy (open input, open method, open output).
What are the three classes of human settlement?
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has a Geographic Names Information System that defines three classes of human settlement: Populated place − place or geographic area with clustered or scattered buildings and a permanent human population (city , settlement , town, village).
What is a settlement in geospatial modeling?
In the field of geospatial predictive modeling, settlements are "a city, town, village, or other agglomeration of buildings where people live and work". The Global Human Settlement Layer ( GHSL) framework produces global spatial information about the human presence on the planet over time.
What is a settlement in geography?
In geography, statistics and archaeology, a settlement, locality or populated place is a community in which people live. The complexity of a settlement can range from a small number of dwellings grouped together to the largest of cities with surrounding urbanized areas.
What is an urban settlement?
The UK Department for Communities and Local Government uses the term "urban settlement" to denote an urban area when analysing census information. The Registrar General for Scotland defines settlements as groups of one or more contiguous localities, which are determined according to population density and postcode areas. The Scottish settlements are used as one of several factors defining urban areas.
What is landscape history?
Landscape history studies the form (morphology) of settlements – for example whether they are dispersed or nucleated. Urban morphology can thus be considered a special type of cultural-historical landscape studies. Settlements can be ordered by size, centrality or other factors to define a settlement hierarchy. A settlement hierarchy can be used for classifying settlement all over the world, although a settlement called a 'town' in one country might be a 'village' in other countries; or a 'large town' in some countries might be a 'city' in others.
Is a populated place incorporated?
A populated place is usually not incorporated and by definition has no legal boundaries. However, a populated place may have a corresponding "civil" record, the legal boundaries of which may or may not coincide with the perceived populated place.
How do settlement patterns change?
Settlement patterns change through time. Cities, the largest and densest human settlements, are the major nodes of human society. Throughout the world, cities are growing rapidly, but none so rapidly as those in developing regions. Urbanization is changing the current patterns of both rural and urban landscapes around the world.
What are the types of settlement patterns observed across regions?
Analyze maps and satellite images and compare different types of settlement patterns observed across regions (e.g., linear rural settlement along roadways, railways, and rivers; urban centers that spread from a central node; village clusters or rural landscapes; seaport settlements that are interrupted by water, such as a water body or a large river).
What factors led to the decline and/or disappearance of towns and cities?
Analyze and explain the factors that led to the decline and/or disappearance of towns and cities (e.g., rail lines did not connect with the town, relocation of the county seat, decline in resource extraction or production, single-industry towns in periods of recession, bypassed by road development, out-migration of people, especially young people).
What are the functions of settlements?
Functions of Settlements. 1. The numbers, types, and range of the functions of settlements change over space and time. Therefore, the student is able to: A. Explain how and why the number and range of functions of settlements have changed and may change in the future, as exemplified by being able to.
What do students need to understand to understand human settlement?
Students must understand the processes underlying the patterns of human settlement over space and time. Understanding these themes enables students to see settlements as a record of human history and as the fulcrum of many of the human processes that are changing Earth’s surface.
What information do settlements provide?
Today’s settlement patterns provide information about past settlement processes and land-use patterns.
What are the organized groups of human habitation?
The organized groupings of human habitation are the intense focus of most aspects of human life: economic activities, transportation systems, communications media, political and administrative systems, education, culture, and entertainment.
What are the two categories of settlements?
Using as classification criteria the shape, internal structure, and streets texture, settlements can be classified into two broad categories: clustered and dispersed.
Where did the dispersed settlement pattern originate?
In the United States, the dispersed settlement pattern was developed first in the Middle Atlantic colonies as a result of the individual immigrants’ arrivals. As people started to move westward, where land was plentiful, the isolated type of settlements became dominant in the American Midwest.
What is a scattered village?
A scattered dispersed type of rural settlement is generally found in a variety of landforms, such as the foothill, tableland, and upland regions. Yet, the proper scattered village is found at the highest elevations and reflects the rugged terrain and pastoral economic life. The population maintains many traditional features in architecture, dress, and social customs, and the old market centers are still important. Small plots and dwellings are carved out of the forests and on the upland pastures wherever physical conditions permit. Mining, livestock raising, and agriculture are the main economic activities, the latter characterized by terrace cultivation on the mountain slopes. The sub-mountain regions, with hills and valleys covered by plowed fields, vineyards, orchards, and pastures, typically have this type of settlement.
What is linear settlement?
Linear Rural Settlements. The linear form is comprised of buildings along a road, river, dike, or seacoast. Excluding the mountainous zones, the agricultural land is extended behind the buildings. The river can supply the people with a water source and the availability to travel and communicate.
What is clustered rural settlement?
A clustered rural settlement is a rural settlement where a number of families live in close proximity to each other, with fields surrounding the collection of houses and farm buildings. The layout of this type of village reflects historical circumstances, the nature of the land, economic conditions, and local cultural characteristics. ...
Where do isolated farms live?
In the United States, the dispersed settlement pattern was developed first in the Middle Atlantic colonies as a result of the individual immigrants’ arrivals. As people started to move westward, where land was plentiful, the isolated type of settlements became dominant in the American Midwest. These farms are located in the large plains and plateaus agricultural areas, but some isolated farms, including hamlets, can also be found in different mountainous areas ( Figures 12.7 and 12.8 ).
Where are small garden plots located?
Small garden plots are located in the first ring surrounding the houses , continued with large cultivated land areas, pastures, and woodlands in successive rings. The compact villages are located either in the plain areas with important water resources or in some hilly and mountainous depressions.
Why is the study of human settlements important?
The study of human settlements is essential to human geography because the form of settlement in any particular region reflects a human relationship with the environment. A human settlement is defined as a region populated more or less permanently. The houses may be planned or redesigned, buildings may be remodelled, functions may change, ...
What is compact settlement?
Compact or Nucleated settlements: These settlements are those in which a large number of houses are constructed very close to each other. Such settlements grow along river valleys and in fertile plains. Communities are closely knit and share common professions.
What are some examples of planned settlements?
Sites that are not instinctively chosen by villagers themselves, planned settlements are established by governments by giving shelter, water and other infrastructural facilities on acquired lands. The plan of villagisation in Ethiopia and the canal communities in Indira Gandhi canal command area in India are some examples.
What factors influence the location of rural settlements?
3.1 Some factors influencing the location of rural settlements are: 3.2 Rural Settlement Patterns. We all live in clumps of houses. You may call it a village, a city or a town; all are patterns of human settlements. The study of human settlements is essential to human geography because the form of settlement in any particular region reflects ...
What are the benefits of a wet point settlement?
Most water-based ‘wet point’ settlements have many benefits such as water for cooking, washing and drinking. Rivers and lakes can be used to water farmland. Water bodies also have aquatic living beings like fish which can be grabbed for diet, and traversable rivers and lakes can be used for shipping.
What is the pattern of a circular village?
Circular pattern: Circular villages grow around lakes, tanks and sometimes the village is organised in such a way that the central part remains accessible and is used for keeping the animals to guard them against wild animals.
What are the activities of rural settlements?
Rural settlements are most intimately and directly associated with the land. They are controlled by primary activities such as agriculture, animal husbandry, fishing etc. The establishment’s size is relatively small.

Overview
In geography, statistics and archaeology, a settlement, locality or populated place is a community in which people live. The complexity of a settlement can range from a small number of dwellings grouped together to the largest of cities with surrounding urbanized areas. Settlements may include hamlets, villages, towns and cities. A settlement may have known historical properties such as the dat…
History
The geographical evidence of a human settlement was Jebel Irhoud, whose early modern human remains of eight individuals date back to the Middle Paleolithic around 300,000 years ago.
The oldest remains that have been found of constructed dwellings are remains of huts that were made of mud and branches around 17,000 BC at the Ohalo sit…
Statistics
Geoscience Australia defines a populated place as "a named settlement with a population of 200 or more persons".
The Committee for Geographical Names in Australasia used the term localities for rural areas, while the Australian Bureau of Statistics uses the term "urban centres/localities" for urban areas.
Geospatial modeling
In the field of geospatial predictive modeling, settlements are "a city, town, village, or other agglomeration of buildings where people live and work".
The Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) framework produces global spatial information about the human presence on the planet over time. This in the form of built up maps, population density maps and settlement maps. This information is generated with evidence-based analytics and kn…
Abandonment
The term "Abandoned populated places" is a Feature Designation Name in databases sourced by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and GeoNames.
Sometimes the structures are still easily accessible, such as in a ghost town, and these may become tourist attractions. Some places that have the appeara…
See also
• Administrative division
• Colony
• Human outpost
• Informal settlement
• List of Neolithic settlements
External links
• The Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) framework