What Are Urban Settlements?
Urban settlements may be linear, square, star-shaped. A settlement’s form and style of buildings are consequences of its historical and cultural development. This article talks about the different Types of Urban Settlements.
Urban settlements are generally compact and larger in size. Urban settlements are generally engaged in non-agricultural activities, economic and administrative functions.
According to the size and availability of services urban settlements can be designated as a town, city, conurbation, megapolis, etc.
Town
The concept can be best understood with reference to the village. Some specific functions such as manufacturing, retail and wholesale and some professional activities persist in towns.
City
Another types of urban settlement. Definition by Lewis Mumford – “the city is in fact the physical form of the highest and most complex type of associative life”. Cities are larger than towns and have a variety of economic functions. Many of them are major financial institutions, administrative offices.
When its population crosses the one million mark it is designated as a million city.
Conurbation
The term conurbation was coined by Patrick Geddes in 1915 and applied to a large area resulting from the merging of originally separated towns or cities. Among the examples are Greater London, Manchester, Tokyo, etc.
Million city
As written above, the cities which cross the one million population mark are designated as million cities. The number of these cities in the world has increased as never before.
Cities like London reached the one million mark in 1800, Paris in 1850. There were 162 million cities in the mid-’70s. In 2005, the number reached 438.
Megapolis
The word Megapolis is derived from the Greek language meaning “ great city “. The term was popularized by Jean Gottman (1957) and described a ‘ super-metropolitan ‘ region that encompassed all the conurbations. The urban landscape stretching from Boston in the north to the south of Washington in the USA is the best-known example of a megapolis.
Urbanization in India
- The level of urbanization is measured in terms of the percentage of the urban population to the total population.
- The level of urbanization in India according to the census of 2011 is 31.16 %
- Total urban population has increased elevenfold during the twentieth century
- Enlargements of urban centers and the emergence of newly established towns have played a significant role in the growth of the urban population.
Classification Of Urban Settlements
Classification of urban settlements can be done on the basis of -:
- Population size
- Occupational structure
- Administration
- location
