Services are clustered in settlements. Rural settlements are centers for agriculture and provide a small number of services. Urban settlements are centers for consumer and business services. Around one-half of the people in the world live in rural settlements and the other half in urban settlements.
Key Issue 4: Why Do Services Cluster in Settlements?
Services in Rural Settlements Rural settlements are either clustered or dispersed. A clustered rural settlement is an agriculturally-based community in which a number of families live in close proximity to each other, with fields surrounding the collection of houses and farm buildings. A dispersed rural settlement is characterized by farmers living on individual farms isolated from neighbors rather than alongside other farmers in settlements.
Clustered Rural Settlements A clustered rural settlement typically includes homes, barns, tools, sheds, and other farm structures, plus consumer services, such as religious structures, schools, and shops. The arrangement of buildings and services in rural settlements is based on local cultural and physical characteristics. The most common patterns are circular or linear.
Circular Clustered Rural Settlements A central open space surrounded by structures is characteristic of a circular clustered rural settlement. A kraal is a circular settlement constructed by the Masai in sub-Saharan Africa.
Linear Clustered Rural Settlements Buildings clustered along a road, river, or dike is characteristic of a linear clustered rural settlement. Long-lot farms along the St. Lawrence River in Quebec provide an example of this type of settlement.
Clustered New England Rural Settlements were characteristic of colonial New England. New England colonists built clustered settlements centered on an open area called a common. Remnants of this settlement pattern are still visible today with a central common surrounded by churches, schools, and houses.
Dispersed Rural Settlements A dispersed rural settlement is typical of most of the United States. The Middle Atlantic colonies were settled by more heterogeneous groups than those in New England. As the settlers moved westward they took their preference for individual, isolated farms with them. The availability of plentiful and cheap land supported this practice. Between 1750 and 1850 the enclosure movement in the United Kingdom transformed the rural landscape by consolidating individually owned strips of land surrounding a village into a single large farm owned by an individual. When necessary, the government forced people to give up their former holdings. The enclosure movement brought greater agriculture efficiency, but it destroyed the self-contained world of village life. The Industrial Revolution also occurred during this time period, providing employment options for those displaced from the farms.
Services in Early Urban Settlements Before permanent settlements functioned as service centers, people lived as nomads, migrating in small groups across the landscape in search of food and water. At some point, groups decided to build permanent settlements. Several families clustered together in a rural location and obtained food in the surrounding area. Early settlements in Southwest Asia, Egypt, China, and South Asia, may have diffused from Mesopotamia or developed independently.
Services in the Earliest Settlements No one knows the precise sequence of events through which settlements were established to provide services. Based on archaeological research, settlements probably originated to provide consumer and public services. Business services followed later.
Early Consumer Services The earliest permanent settlements may have been established to offer consumer services, specifically places to bury the dead. Having established a permanent resting place for the dead, the group might then install priests at the site to perform the service of saying prayers for the deceased. This would have encouraged the building of structures—places for ceremonies and dwellings.
Early Business Services Early urban settlements were places where groups could store surplus food and trade with other groups. People brought plants, animals, and minerals, as well as tools, clothing, and containers, to the urban settlements, and exchanged them for items brought by others. To facilitate this trade, officials in the settlement set fair prices, kept records, and created currency.
Early Public Services Early settlements housed political leaders as well as forces to guard the residents of the settlement and defend the surrounding hinterland from conquest by others.
Ancient Urban Settlements Settlements were first established in the eastern Mediterranean about 2500 B.C.E. These settlements were trading centers for the thousands of islands dotting the Aegean Sea and the eastern Mediterranean and provided government, military protection, and other public services for the surrounding hinterlands. These settlements were organized into city-states, self-governing communities that included the settlement and its nearby countryside. Settlements housed families and permitted unburdened males to travel farther and faster in their search for food. Women kept “home and hearth” producing household objects and educating children. Settlements became manufacturing centers producing weapons, containers, clothing, and shelter. The rise of the Roman Empire encouraged urban settlement. After the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century and the contraction of trade, urban settlements began to decline.
Medieval Urban Settlements With the collapse of the Roman Empire, the majority of the world’s largest urban settlements were clustered in China. Urban life began to revive in Europe in the eleventh century, as feudal lords established new urban settlements. The lords gave residents charters of rights with which to establish independent cities in exchange for their military service. After the end of serfdom, urban dwellers set about expanding trade. Surplus from the countryside was brought into the city for sale or exchange, and markets were expanded through trade with other free cities. By the fourteenth century, Europe was covered by a dense network of small market towns. In larger European settlements, the most important public services occupied palaces, churches, and other prominent buildings arranged around a central market square. Many medieval settlements were surrounded by walls.
Urbanization The process by which the populations of urban settlements grow is known as urbanization. Urbanization has two dimensions: an increase in the percentage of people living in urban settlements and an increase in the number of people living urban settlements. These two factors have different global distributions and occur for different reasons. A century ago, social scientists observed striking differences between urban and rural residents. An urban dweller follows a different way of life than a rural dweller. These urban settlements are differentiated from rural areas by their large size, high population density, and socially heterogeneous people. These characteristics produced differences in the social behavior of urban and rural residents.
Urban-Rural Differences: Large Size If you live in a rural settlement, you know most of the other inhabitants and may even be related to many of them. The people with whom you relax are probably the same ones you see in local shops and at church. In contrast, if you live in an urban settlement, you can know only a small percentage of the other residents.
Urban-Rural Differences: High Density High density also produces social consequences for urban residents. The only way that a large number of people can be supported in a small area is through specialization. Each person in an urban settlement plays a special role or performs a specific task to allow the complex, urban system to function smoothly. By the same token, high density also encourages social groups to compete to occupy the same territory.
Urban-Rural Differences: Social Heterogeneity The larger the settlement, the greater the variety of people. A person has greater freedom in an urban settlement than in rural settlement to pursue an unusual profession, sexual orientation, or cultural interest. In a rural settlement, unusual action might be noticed and scorned, but urban residents are more tolerant of diverse social behavior. Regardless of values and preferences, in a large urban settlement, individuals can find people with similar interests. People in crowded urban areas may feel isolated. In developed countries motor vehicles, electronic devices, and modern communications and transportation systems have reduced the differences between urban and rural lifestyles.
Percentage in Urban Settlements The percentage of the world’s population living in urban settlements has increased rapidly, from 3 percent in 1800 to 6 percent in 1850, 14 percent in 1900, 30 percent in 1950, and 45 percent in 2000. The population of Earth’s urban settlements exceeded that of rural settlements for the first time in human history around 2008. The percentage of people living in urban settlements mirrors a country’s level of development. In developed countries, 79 percent live in urban areas, compared to 50 percent in developing countries. The gap in urbanization between developed and developing countries is closing rapidly. Throughout the world an increase in the percentage living in urban areas results in a decrease in the percentage living in rural areas.
Megacities A megacity is an urban settlement with a total population in excess of 10 million people. A metacity has more than 20 million people. Developed countries have a higher percentage of urban residents, but developing countries have more very large urban settlements. Three of the world’s 11 megacities are located in developed countries—Tokyo, Seoul, and New York. Developed countries only have 9 of the 37 megacities including Osaka, Moscow, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Nagoya, and the three megacities previously listed.
Rapidly-Growing Cities All but 4 of the 100 fastest-growing urban settlements in 2018 were in developing countries. Five of the 13 growing at more than 4 percent per year are in Africa, 3 are in India, 4 are elsewhere in Asia, and 1 is in Latin America. The 4 in developed countries include 3 in the United States—Atlanta, Austin, Las Vegas, and Suwon, South Korea. In developing countries, migration from the countryside contributes half of the increase in population in urban settlements, even though job opportunities may be scarce. Another major factor fueling urban growth in developing countries is natural increase.
12.4
Clustered A pattern of rural settlement in which the houses and farm buildings of each family are situated close to each others' fields and surround the settlement.
Dispersed Settlement pattern with people living relatively far from each other on their farms
Enclosure movement The process of consolidating small landholdings into a smaller number of larger farms in England during the eighteenth century.
Linear settlement A rural land use pattern that creates a long, narrow settlement around a river, coast, or road that looks like a line
Long Lot A rural land use pattern that divides land into long, narrow lined up along a waterway or road
Metes and bounds A system of describing parcels of land where the metes are the lines (including angle and distance that surround the property) and bound describes features such as a river or public road
No tillage A farming practice that leaves all of the soil undisturbed and the entire residue of the previous year's harvest left untouched on the fields.
Township and range A system of dividing large parcels of where the townships describe how far north or south from the center point