Settlements and urbanisation
The site, pattern and hierarchy of settlements, land use in cities, and the causes and effects of rapid urban growth.
📌 Key points
- The site of a settlement is the land it is built on (e.g. a bridging point or hilltop); its situation is its location in relation to surrounding features such as rivers, roads and other settlements.
- Settlement patterns: dispersed (scattered buildings), nucleated (clustered around a centre, e.g. a crossroads) and linear (along a road, river or coast).
- A settlement hierarchy ranks settlements by size and services: hamlet, village, town, city, megacity (over 10 million people); larger settlements have more and higher-order services.
- The threshold is the minimum number of people needed to keep a service running; the range is the maximum distance people will travel to use it; the sphere of influence is the area served by a settlement.
- Low-order goods (e.g. bread, newspapers) are bought often and have a small range; high-order goods (e.g. furniture, jewellery) are bought rarely and have a large range.
- Typical urban land-use zones: the CBD (shops, offices, highest land values), the inner city, the suburbs (mainly residential) and the rural-urban fringe (mix of urban and rural uses).
- Urbanisation is the increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas; it is caused by rural-urban migration and natural increase in cities.
- Rapid urbanisation in LICs can lead to squatter settlements (informal housing built on land people do not own), traffic congestion, pollution and pressure on services.
- Solutions include site-and-service schemes, self-help housing, improved public transport and better water and sanitation.
- Urban sprawl is the uncontrolled spread of a city into surrounding countryside; counter-urbanisation is the movement of people from cities to smaller towns and rural areas.
📖 Key terms
- Site
- The physical land on which a settlement is built.
- Situation
- The location of a settlement in relation to the surrounding area.
- Threshold population
- The minimum number of people needed to support a service.
- Range
- The maximum distance people are willing to travel to use a service.
- Sphere of influence
- The area around a settlement from which people come to use its services.
- CBD
- Central Business District: the commercial centre of a city, with the highest land values.
- Urbanisation
- An increase in the proportion of a country's population living in urban areas.
- Squatter settlement
- An area of informal housing built illegally on land the residents do not own.
✏️ Worked example
On a map, a church is in grid square 4527. It is 3 tenths of the way across the square from the left and 6 tenths of the way up. Give its six-figure grid reference.
- Read the easting first (along the bottom): the square starts at line 45.
- Add the tenths across: 3 tenths, so the easting is 453.
- Then read the northing (up the side): the square starts at line 27.
- Add the tenths up: 6 tenths, so the northing is 276.
- Answer: 453276.
For land-use or settlement questions, always use map or photo evidence (grid references, names, distances) when the question gives you a resource. Remember: eastings before northings ('along the corridor, then up the stairs').
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