Settlements Note

Settlements

Key Concepts

• Settlement: Grouping of people, activities, and buildings, ranging from a small village to a large city.
• Site: Actual place where a settlement grew (e.g., Cape Town around Table Bay).
• Situation: Location of a settlement in relation to its surrounding features like soil, climate, rivers, geology, and vegetation (e.g., Johannesburg on the Witwatersrand).

Factors Affecting Site and Situation

Physical

• Availability of water
• Fertile, well-drained soil
• Water avoidance (dry point settlements)
• Natural harbors
• Availability of building materials and energy resources
• Positive effects of microclimate (slope aspects, inversions, wind protection)
• Relief: Plains are more favorable than higher mountainous areas

Economic

• Farming factors (soil)
• Tourist attractions (e.g., Skukuza in Kruger National Park)
• Mining (e.g., Kimberley)
• Financial hubs (e.g., Johannesburg)

Political

• Safety: Defensive sites to protect from invaders (moats, hilly areas, walled settlements)
• Policy: Government creation of new settlements due to housing needs (e.g., Ivory Park Village in Midrand)

Examples of Site Selection

• Defensive: Hilly areas
• Bridging points: Where routes converge
• Hill-foot: Base of hills
• Route ways: Along transport routes
• Marshland: Elevated points in marshy areas
• Gap site: Through gaps in terrain
• Route center: Central point of routes
• Wet point: Access to water in dry areas
• Dry point: Elevated site to avoid flooding

Types of Settlements

Rural

• Isolated buildings
• Hamlets
• Villages
• Small market towns

Urban

• Larger industrial towns
• Towns/Cities (25,000+ people)
• Metropolitan areas
• Conurbations or capitals
• Megacities (10 million+)
• Megalopolis
• Urban agglomerations (e.g., Eastern coast of U.S.A)

Latest Settlement Terminology

• Zoom Towns: Small coastal towns benefiting from people seeking a better lifestyle due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with young digital nomads and remote workers moving there (e.g., Hermanus, Langebaan).
• Social Housing: Rental housing for households earning between R1,501 - R15,000/month, subsidized by the government and managed by Social Housing Institutions.
• Backyard Dwellers: Practice where homeowners rent a portion of their yard, often resulting in backyard shacks.
• Metro Centre: A large regional city center that anchors the urban center network.
• Agropolis: Urban agriculture, cultivating food in and around urban areas for food security, nutrition, and income.
• Prestige: Areas that attract people and businesses due to desirability.

Settlement Hierarchy

A settlement hierarchy reflects the size of settlements and the number of services they offer.

• Urban: Capital, City, Regional Centre, Large Town and Small Town.
• Rural: Village, Hamlet and Isolated Place.

In general, larger settlements have larger populations, more services and are less common.

Characteristics of Rural Settlements

• Typically in the form of villages surrounded by farms.
• Small population.
• Occupations include forestry, farming, fishing, mining, and tourism.
• Limited range of services, mostly for everyday needs.
• Close-knit communities with a quiet atmosphere.
• Dominance of community feeling.

Rural Settlement Types

• Dispersed: Scattered settlements over a large area, typically agricultural with low population density.
• Nucleated/Clustered: Settlements clustered around a central point, commonly found in urban-type areas with high population density.
• Linear/Street/Ribbon: Settlements formed in a long line, often following a transport route like a road, river, or coastline.

Land Use in Rural Settlements

• Agriculture: Subsistence or Commercial farming.
• Dwellings/houses/settlements.
• Granary/farm produce storage structure.
• Roads and paths.
• Grazing land.
• Storage buildings and equipment.
• Cultivated lands.
• Water storage areas/reservoirs.

Rural Advantages

1. More natural environment.
2. Better social/support network.
3. Less stressful environment.
4. Perceived as safer.
5. Class differences are not as distinctive.

Rural Disadvantages

1. Limited transportation available.
2. Social network can lead to strain (small town gossip).
3. Limited employment opportunities.
4. Slower social, political progress.
5. Less immediately available social services.

Rural-Urban Distinction

Classification of Economic Activities

• Primary: Extractive activities (fishing, farming, forestry, hunting, mining).
• Secondary: Processing industries, manufacturing (e.g., sawmills, motor assembly).
• Tertiary: Services (sales, retail, transport, professions).
• Quaternary: Complex processing and handling of information (education, research, engineering, IT).
• Quinary: Highest levels of decision making in a society or economy (top executives, officials in government, science, universities, NGOs, healthcare).

Tertiary sector provides service to all the sectors including transport, marketing, banking, power, telecommunications, etc.

Ancient Urban Areas/Cities/Settlements

• Oldest cities are found in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and the Indus Valley.
• Mesopotamia (Jordan/Iraq)
  • Jericho (10,000 B.C.)
  • Ur (3,000 B.C., Iraq)
  • Walled cities based on agricultural trade
  • Ziggurat (stepped temple)
    *Civilization Name: Chinese civilization
    *Period: 1600 BC–1046 BC
    *Original Location: Yellow River and Yangtze region
    *Current Location: Country of China
    *Major Highlights: Invention of paper and silk, gunpowder, paper, printing, the compass, alcohol, cannons, and many more.

Functions of Ancient Cities

• Protection
• Places to gather surplus food
• Distribution center
• Place of Religious center
• Center of Authority (king)
• Provide law and order

When did Urbanization appear?

• Mesopotamia: 4500 B.C.
• Nile Valley: 3200 B.C.
• Indus Valley: 3000 B.C.
• Huang Ho: 2500 B.C.
• Andean Region: 2000 B.C.
• Mesoamerica: 1500 B.C.
  Civilization Name: Mesopotamian civilization
  *Period: 3500 BC–500 BC
  *Original Location: Northeast by the Zagros mountains, southeast by the Arabian plateau
  *Current Location: Iraq, Syria, and Turkey
  *Meaning: Land between rivers (ancient Greek)
  *Major Highlights: First civilisation in the world
  The Ancient Egyptian Civilization
  *Civilization Name: Egyptian civilization
  *Period: 3150 BC–30 BC
  *Original Location: Banks of the Nile
  *Current Location: Egypt
  *Major Highlights: Construction of pyramids, pharaohs, and the Sphinx
  Indus Valley Civilization
  *Civilization Name: Indus Valley civilization
  *Period: 3300 BC–1900 BC
  *Original Location: Around the basin of the Indus river
  *Current Location: Northeast Afghanistan to Pakistan and northwest India
  *Major Highlights: One of the most widespread civilizations, covering 1.25 million km
  The Mayan Civilization
  *Civilization Name: Mayan civilization
  *Period: 2600 BC–900 AD
  *Original Location: Around present-day Yucatan
  *Current Location: Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Campeche, Tabasco, and Chiapas in Mexico and south through Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and Honduras
  *Major Highlights: Complex understanding of astronomy, Calendar,also built Pyramids.

Development of Ancient Cities

• High dependence on nature.
• Space regarded as a place for the entire cosmic environment.
• Human being regarded as a micro cosmos; house as a macro cosmos.
• Harmony maintained between micro and macro cosmos through severe arrangements in space orders and orientation.
• Space orientation determines linkage pattern between entire cosmos power.
• Road junctions considered sacred places.

Landmarks of City

• Landmarks represent their city as a mark, a badge, a brand sending ripples beyond the city boundary.
• Primeval landmarks were at first natural features and then modified natural features.

Origin of City

• Pre-industrial cities were mostly trading cities near water.
• Colonial cities were built to export goods to mother country, located near water, and had roads to help get exports out.

Classification

• European cities were usually much smaller during this time.
• Non-European Cities during the Middle Ages:
  * Timbuktu
  * Chang’an
  * Kyoto
  * Tenochtitlan Constantinople
  * Baghdad
• The Industrial Revolution generated massive urbanization.
  • The growth of factories and urban jobs was a huge pull factor from rural areas.
  • Created a steady rural-urban migration pattern.
  • Cities expand exponentially.
  • Rise of megalopolis!

Megalopolis

• An urban area that results from cities getting so big that they reach each other, create one massive urban area
• Example: New England-Washington DC, Boston, Philadelphia all one big urban area
• By 1900 most large cities were American or European industrial cities, such as Manchester, Chicago, and Barcelona.
  *Accompanying: high pollution levels, overcrowding and exploitation of children in factories.

Map Work

• Indus Valley Civilization
• Roman Civilization: Dates back to the 6th Century BC
• Ancient Egypt: Took place between 3100 BC and 2686 BC.
• Mesopotamia: Was the first civilization to emerge in human history.
• Aztecs
• Mayan
• Constantinople (Turkey)
• Mexico
• Cairo
• Beijing
• Alexandria
• Pataliputra(Patna)

Differences in Services Between Rural and Urban Settlements

Rural Settlement Issues

• Rural –Urban migration
• Rural depopulation
• Urbanisation
• Ageing population.
• Ghost towns-counter urbanisation
• Distance, Lack of capital, travel cost, illiteracy
• Misinformation, new life style,
• Obstacles faced by rural –urban migrants.

Push Factors

• few services
• lack of job opportunities
• unhappy life
• poor transport links
• natural disasters
• wars
• shortage of food

Pull Factors

• access to services
• better job opportunities
• more entertainment facilities
• better transport links
• improved living conditions
• hope for a better way of life
• family links

Urbanisation

• Urbanisation refers to the population shift from rural to urban areas, the corresponding decrease in the proportion of people living in rural areas, and the ways in which societies adapt to this change.
• Urbanisation is the increase in the proportion of people living in towns and cities.
• Urbanisation occurs because people move from rural areas (countryside) to urban areas (towns and cities). This usually occurs when a country is still developing.

Timeline of Urbanisation

• The process of more and more people living in cities of a country is called urbanisation.
  

• Urban Land Use
  Urbanization is the increase over time in the population of cities in relation to the region's rural population (new world encyclopedia).
  *Increase in population size of city in relation to rural population
  The term urbanization is also used for the expansion of urban land uses.
• It moves populations from traditional rural environments with informal political and economic institutions to the relative anonymity and more formal institutions of urban settings.
  *Urbanisation was first started in United States of America
  *During the American colonial period, cities along the eastern seaboard were the centers of commerce and politics, thus urbanization began there
• Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were the three largest cities in population size. Yet they were tiny in comparison to their size today. In 1790, the year after George Washington became the first president of the new nation, New York's population was only 33,131; Philadelphia's was 28,522; and Boston's was 18,230.

Characteristics of Urban Settlements

• In the form of towns and cities.
• They are large, both in population and area.
• Has functions such as business, manufacturing, government cultural center.
• Wide range of services offered including specialized service.
• Unlike rural settlement, neighborhood is separate with limited knowledge of others.
• Traffic and pollution problem.

Urban Advantages

1. Services: Proximity to major and varied services.
2. Employment: Majority of higher paying jobs/careers are found there.
3. Current: art, fashions, politics, and higher culture.
4. Multi-cultural (which I personally see as a plus).
5. Transportation: Mass transit, buses, taxis…etc.

Urban Disadvantages

1. More crime.
2. Pollution: more people, more waste, more noise, less trees and nature…etc…
3. Impersonal and sometimes isolating.
4. Clear distinction between social classes (example: the beggar on the street, in front of million dollar downtown condos)

Urbanization

The Causes of Urbanisation

1. US cities became more numerous and much larger during the nineteenth century because of two trends.
2. The first was immigration, as waves of immigrants from Ireland and then Italy and other nations began coming to the United States during the 1820s.
3. The second was industrialization, as people moved to live near factories and other sites of industrial production.
4. These two trends were momentous: People crowded together as never before, and they crowded into living conditions that were often squalid.
5. American cities grew even more rapidly after the Civil War as both industrialization and immigration continued. By the early years of the twentieth century, US cities on the East Coast were almost unimaginably crowded

Global urbanization

*If the United States has urbanized during the last two centuries, so has much of the rest of the world.

• Only 3 percent of the world's population lived in urban areas in 1800.
  • By a century later in 1900, 14 percent of the world's population lived in urban areas, and twelve cities had populations over 1 million.
• Just a half-century later in 1950, the world's urban population had doubled to 30 percent, and the number of cities over 1 million grew sx times to eighty-three cities.
  *Today, more than half the world's population lives in urban areas, and the number of cities over 1 million stands at more than four hundred.
• By 2030, almost two-thirds of the world's population is projected to live in urban areas.
• The number of megacities-cities with populations over 10 million- rose from three in 1975 to sixteen in 2000, and is expected to reach twenty-seven by 2025

Chart

2045-urban population will reach 6 billion
Globally V *Increasing (proportion) - -population declineV 3.9 billion in 2014 economiccontractionof a countries population