Settlements

• Services

  • Churches
  • Hotels
  • School
  • Bank
  • Supermarkets
  • Bakeries
  • Surgery
  • Pharmacy
  • Cafe-bars
  • Souvenir shops
  • Leather workshop and store
  • Museum
  • Market
  • Restaurants
• Capiliera


  • Tourism provides alternative employment in hotels etc. and also as transport providers and tour guides
  • Has a tourist and historical function now
  • Nucleated for defence, services and cultural reasons
  • Built on flatter areas on steep valley sides
  • Irrigated by canal system fed by melting snow from mountains
• Nucleated


  Clustered together as villages, compact shape, more square/circular often around a church or crossroads
• Dispersed


  Scattered, isolated dwellings and small hamlets with few villages
• Linear


  Settlements in long thin rows, often along roads, tracks, rivers or valley bottoms
• Agricultural land


  • Poor, people need to farm large areas
• Sphere of influence


  Size and services, population density, wealth, transport, competition
• Low order settlements


  Villages, hamlets
• Range

  Maximum distance people will travel for a service
• Threshold population

  Minimum number of people needed to provide enough demand for a service, services with large threshold population are high order
• A hamlet is a small settlement typically consisting of a few houses and lacking services like shops or schools.
• A town is a human settlement larger than a village but smaller than a city, with a defined boundary and local government.
• A village is a larger settlement than a hamlet but still relatively small compared to towns and cities. It may have some basic amenities such as a shop, school, church, and pub.
• The range refers to the maximum distance that people are willing to travel to access certain goods or services.
• The threshold population represents the minimum number of people required to support a particular level of service provision.
• An urban area refers to an area that has been developed into a built-up environment where the majority of buildings are used for residential purposes.
• Urbanization is the process by which populations shift from living in rural areas to living in towns and cities.
• Hierarchy of settlements refers to the arrangement of different types of settlements based on their size and function within an area.
• Reasons for growth and site of hamlets etc.

  • Defence sometimes necessary
  • High ground, top of steep slopes, inside river meanders
  • Bridging point-Where a bridge or shallow point to cross
  • Agricultural land-Most villages began as agri settlements. Provides food to village so key aspect
  • Relief Altitude too low means bad drainage, high too cold for farming
  • Gradient important, gently sloping good drainage, easy to build on, steep can be defense advantage
  • Aspect Direction slope faces, important in mountain areas due to sun needed for farming
  • Soils Fertile produce more food so densely settled on, large population. Rich too important to build on
  • Water supply-Drainage, water supply, irrigation
  • Flooding Floodplains bad to settle on although fertile
  • Accessibility-Benefit from contact to sell/buy