SETTLEMENT
A settlement is a place where people live. Settlements can be as small as a single
house in a remote area or as a large as a mega city (a city with over 10 million
residents).
A settlement may be permanent or temporary. An example of a temporary settlement
is a refugee camp. However, a temporary settlement may become permanent over
time. This has happened to many refugee camps that have been built in conflict zones.
Settlements usually develop to have a specific function. For example, the settlement
of Southampton is a port.
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Settlement: is a place where people live. A settlement may be as small as a single house
in a remote area or as a large as a mega city (a city with over 10 million residents).
Site: is the actual location of a settlement on the earth and is composed of the physical
characteristics of the landscape specific to the area. Site factors include things like
landforms (i.e. is the area protected by mountains or is there a natural harbor present?),
climate, vegetation types, availability of water, soil quality, minerals, and even wildlife.
Situation: is defined as the location of a place relative to its surroundings and other
places. Factors included in an area's situation include the accessibility of the location, the
extent of a place's connections with another, and how close an area may be to raw
materials if they are not located specifically on the site.
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.
Patterns of settlement
Settlements take on a range of shapes when they form. Dispersed, linear and
nucleated are the most common.
Patterns of settlement
A dispersed pattern is where isolated buildings are spread out across an area,
usually separated by a few hundred metres with no central focus. It is typically
an area containing buildings rather than a single settlement. The population is
sparsely distributed in a dispersed settlement. There are usually no services
in a dispersed settlement.
Dispersed settlements usually occur in:
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remote or mountainous regions
areas where the land is predominantly used for agriculture
areas with limited job opportunities
locations with few, if any, job opportunities
A linear settlement pattern occurs in a line or arc shape. They typically follow
a road, valley or water body. This allows the settlement to utilise transport
routes. They can also occur along valley floors where the sides are very
steep.
A nucleated settlement occurs in a circular shape with buildings mainly
concentrated around a common centre such as a road junction, park or
service area. Most large cities are nucleated indicating they are well planned.
Nucleation occurs due to:
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flat relief which is easy to build on
the site has a bridging point
the site is a good defensive position
a good water supply
no restrictions to development in any direction
good job opportunities
effective public services
good transport links
Settlement site and situation
The piece of land upon which a settlement is built is the settlement site.
There are many reasons why a site might be chosen for the development of a settlement and
some factors will be more important than others.
Some common site factors include:
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Wet point sites - these have a good water supply. Many settlements grew around wet point
sites, eg villages in the South Downs.
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Dry point sites - these are away from the risk of flooding, eg Ely in Cambridgeshire.
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Defensive sites - often found on higher ground so that in the past, enemies could be seen from
a distance, eg Corfe Castle, Dorset, or in the loop of a meander, eg Durham.
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Aspect - settlements are often found on the sunny side of a deep valley. This is common in
settlements in the Alps.
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Shelter - from cold prevailing winds and rain.
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Gap towns - Lincoln is found in a gap between two areas of higher ground.
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Resources - important for industry, eg villages such as Aberfan in the Welsh valleys is close
to coal reserves.
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Bridging point - settlements with 'ford' in their name often grew around a fording point or
bridging point, eg Watford is found on the River Colne.
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Trading centres - often settlements grow where natural route ways and rivers meet, which
helps the development of roads, railways and canals.
The importance of many of these functions diminish as technological advances enable people to
overcome difficulties.
The situation of a settlement is its position in relation to the surrounding human and physical
features, many of which will have an impact on the settlement's type, size and function.
With modern settlements, remember that decisions about location and situation have been made
by planners, but that their priorities may differ from those that determined the location of a
historical settlement like Southampton. For example, a modern settlement does not need to be
close to a river because drinking water is now piped to our homes and waterways are no longer
important for transport.
Settlement functions
Most large settlements in MEDCs are multifunctional and perform a range of functions such as
retail, education and industry.
When settlements first started to grow, most had only one distinct function, and others developed
as the settlement grew.
Examples of functions
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Port - the original function of cities such as Liverpool and Southampton. Both are still ports, but this
function has diminished in importance and they are now multifunctional.
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Market town - Watford was originally a market town, and although it still holds a regular market, it is
now a thriving multifunctional centre.
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Resort - Southport was a popular Victorian seaside resort, although it now has many functions and is
a commuter settlement for Liverpool.
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Natural resources in the area enabled Sheffield to develop as an important centre in the iron and
steel industry. Although steel is still produced, its prominence has declined and Sheffield is a thriving
multifunctional city.
Settlement hierarchies
If we group and classify a number of settlements according to their size and shape, the result
is settlement hierarchy.
As you move up the hierarchy, the size of the settlement and the distance between similar sized
settlements increases. As you can see from the diagram above, there are more cities than conurbations,
more towns than cities and more villages than towns.
The number of services that a settlement provides increases with settlement size.
Small settlements will only provide low-order services such as a post offices, doctors and
newsagents. Large towns, cities and conurbations will provide low and high-order services such
as leisure centres, chain stores and hospitals.
Larger settlements and conurbations have a much larger sphere of influence than smaller ones.
This means they attract people from a wider area because of the facilities they offer. Cities such
as London have a global sphere of influence, whereas a small hamlet or village may only have a
sphere of influence of a couple of kilometres.
Services such as department stores selling high order goods have a higher threshold than those
selling low order goods such as newsagents. This means they need a higher number of people to
support them and make them profitable, therefore they will only be found in larger settlements. It
also means that there are fewer big department stores than small newsagents.
The range of a service or product is the maximum distance people are prepared to travel to
purchase it. The range of a newspaper is much lower than an item of furniture for example.
What is a settlement hierarchy?
We can categorise settlements according to their size and shape. The result is
a settlement hierarchy. A settlement hierarchy is found by putting settlements
in a region or country into a rank order either by population or type and range
of services.
A settlement hierachy
As you move up the settlement hierarchy the size of the settlement increases,
as does the population and the range of services available. Smaller
settlements tend to provide only low order services such as a post office and
newsagents. Whereas, larger settlements have more high order services such
as leisure centres and chain stores. As a result of this the larger the
settlement, the greater the range of services and therefore the market area or
sphere of influence. This is the market area that a settlement services (the
distance people will travel to use services).
High order services usually have a high threshold. This means they need a
higher number of people to use the service in order to remain profitable. This
means high order service such as department stores need a greater number
of customers than a low order service such as a newsagent. This is why there
are so few department stores in villages!
The size of a sphere of influence will depend on factors such as:
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the number and types of services it provides
the accessibility of the settlement including transport facilities
the amount of competition from surrounding areas
Services and goods have a threshold population to support them. Examples of
threshold populations include:
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a village shop needs 350 customers
a doctor needs 3500 patients
 a secondary school or Boots chemist needs 10,000 people
 a Marks and Spencer store requires 50,000
 a large, national supermarket chain such as Tesco or Asda needs
60,000
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