Types of Cities and Settlement Hierarchies

• What is the Greenbelt?

  A zone of land around a city where building is strictly constricted to stop a city growing too big, too quickly
• What is a chloropleth map?

  A map that uses differences in shading or colouring to show the average of something in an area
• What is a megacity?

  A city with a population of over 10 million.
• How many megacities are there in the world (2020)?

  34
• What is a world city?

  A city that has a huge trade industry and is used internationally. They hold great global influence.
• How many world cities are there in the world (2020)?

  300
• What is the settlement hierarchy?

  Where you group and classify the number of people living in a certain area - a settlement.
• Key characteristics of the settlement hierarchy include:

  1. The number of jobs available increase with how large the settlement is.
  2. Small settlements usually only provide low-order jobs.
  3. Large settlements provide high-order jobs and have a large sphere of influence over smaller ones.
  4. The range of a product is maximum distance people are willing to travel for it.
• What is informal housing?

  Informal housing (also known as slums or squatter settlements) is where a big city is overpopulated so people make cheap, illegal and unplanned houses out of cheap and easy to come across materials. They are usually made by people who move to the city from a poor life, expecting a better one in the city. It is very hard to leave the areas where they are made as jobs are very bad and the location usually isn't the best.
• What is the internal growth of a city?

  The natural increase of a city's population due to birth rates being higher than death rates.
• What is conurbanisation?

  A conurbation is a region compromising a number of cities, large towns and urban areas that, through population growth, have merged to form one big urban area / city.