In
geography,
statistics and
archaeology, a settlement, locality or populated place is a
community in which people live. The complexity of a settlement can range from a minuscule number of dwellings grouped together to the largest of cities with surrounding
urbanized areas. Settlements may include
hamlets,
villages,
towns and
cities
A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...
. A settlement may have known historical properties such as the date or era in which it was first settled, or first settled by particular people.
In the field of
geospatial predictive modeling, settlements are "a city, town, village or other agglomeration of buildings where people live and work".
A settlement conventionally includes its constructed facilities such as
roads,
enclosures,
field systems,
boundary
Boundary or Boundaries may refer to:
* Border, in political geography
Entertainment
* ''Boundaries'' (2016 film), a 2016 Canadian film
* ''Boundaries'' (2018 film), a 2018 American-Canadian road trip film
*Boundary (cricket), the edge of the pla ...
banks and
ditch
A ditch is a small to moderate divot created to channel water. A ditch can be used for drainage, to drain water from low-lying areas, alongside roadways or fields, or to channel water from a more distant source for plant irrigation. Ditches ar ...
es,
ponds,
parks and
woods,
wind and
water mill
A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower. It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling (grinding), rolling, or hammering. Such processes are needed in the production ...
s,
manor houses,
moats and
churches.
History
The earliest geographical evidence of a human settlement was
Jebel Irhoud, where
early modern human remains of eight individuals date back to the Middle Paleolithic around 300,000 years ago.
The oldest remains that have been found of constructed dwellings are remains of huts that were made of mud and branches around 17,000 BC at the
Ohalo
Ohalo II is an archaeological site in Northern Israel, near Kinneret, on the southwest shore of the Sea of Galilee. It is one of the best preserved hunter-gatherer archaeological sites of the Last Glacial Maximum, radiocarbon dated to around 23,0 ...
site (now underwater) near the edge of the
Sea of Galilee. The
Natufians built houses, also in the
Levant, around 10,000 BC. Remains of settlements such as
villages become much more common after the invention of agriculture.
In landscape history
Landscape history studies the form (morphology) of settlements – for example whether they are
dispersed or
nucleated
The cell nucleus (pl. nuclei; from Latin or , meaning ''kernel'' or ''seed'') is a membrane-bound organelle found in eukaryotic cells. Eukaryotic cells usually have a single nucleus, but a few cell types, such as mammalian red blood cells, ...
.
Urban morphology
Urban morphology is the study of the formation of human settlements and the process of their formation and transformation. The study seeks to understand the spatial structure and character of a metropolitan area, city, town or village by examining ...
can thus be considered a special type of cultural-historical landscape studies. Settlements can be ordered by size, centrality or other factors to define a
settlement hierarchy
A settlement hierarchy is a way of arranging settlements into a hierarchy based upon their population or some other criteria. The term is used by landscape historians and in the National Curriculum for England. The term is also used in the pla ...
. A settlement hierarchy can be used for classifying settlement all over the world, although a settlement called a 'town' in one country might be a 'village' in other countries; or a 'large town' in some countries might be a 'city' in others.
Statistics
Australia
Geoscience Australia
Geoscience Australia is an agency of the Australian Government. It carries out geoscientific research. The agency is the government's technical adviser on all aspects of geoscience, and custodian of the geographic and geological data and knowle ...
defines a populated place as "a named settlement with a population of 200 or more persons".
The
Committee for Geographical Names in Australasia The Permanent Committee on Place Names (PCPN) created from the various Australian and New Zealand committees on geographical names.
The PCPN started in 1984 as the Committee for Geographical Names in Australia (CGNA) and it was renamed in 2005.
It ...
used the term
localities for rural areas, while the
Australian Bureau of Statistics uses the term "urban centres/localities" for urban areas.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
The
Agency for Statistics in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Agency may refer to:
Organizations
* Institution, governmental or others
** Advertising agency or marketing agency, a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for its clients
** Employment agency, a business that s ...
uses the term "populated place""settled place" for rural (or urban as an administrative center of some Municipality/City), and "Municipality" and "City" for urban areas.
Bulgaria
The Bulgarian Government publishes a National Register of Populated places (NRPP).
Canada
The Canadian government uses the term "populated place" in the ''
Atlas of Canada'', but does not define it.
Statistics Canada uses the term
localities for historically named locations.
Croatia
The
Croatian Bureau of Statistics
The Croatian Bureau of Statistics ( hr, Državni zavod za statistiku or DZS) is the Croatian national statistics bureau.
History
The bureau was formed in 1875 in Austria-Hungary as the ''Zemaljski statistički ured'' for the Kingdom of Croati ...
records population in units called
settlements (''naselja'').
India
The Census Commission of
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
has a special definition of
census towns.
Ireland
The
Central Statistics Office of the
Republic of Ireland
Ireland ( ga, Éire ), also known as the Republic of Ireland (), is a country in north-western Europe consisting of 26 of the 32 Counties of Ireland, counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, on the eastern ...
has a special definition of
census towns.
Pakistan
The
Pakistan Bureau of Statistics usman
The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics ( ur, , abbreviated as PBS) is a federal agency under the Government of Pakistan commissioned the national statistical services and to provide solid and comprehensive statistical research. Results c ...
records population in units of settlements called
Tehsil – an administrative unit derived from the
Mughal era.
Russia
There are various
types of inhabited localities in Russia.
Sweden
Statistics Sweden uses the term
localities (''tätort'') for various densely populated places. The common English-language translation is ''urban areas''.
United Kingdom
The UK
Department for Communities and Local Government
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), formerly the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), is a department of His Majesty's Government responsible for housing, communities, local governme ...
uses the term "urban settlement" to denote an
urban area when analysing census information. The
Registrar General for Scotland defines settlements as groups of one or more contiguous localities, which are determined according to
population density
Population density (in agriculture: Stock (disambiguation), standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geographical ...
and
postcode areas. The Scottish settlements are used as one of several factors defining urban areas.
Scottish census information
United States
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has a Geographic Names Information System
The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is a database of name and locative information about more than two million physical and cultural features throughout the United States and its territories, Antarctica, and the associated states of ...
that defines three classes of human settlement:
# Populated place − place or geographic area with clustered or scattered buildings and a permanent human population (city, settlement, town, village). A populated place is usually not incorporated and by definition has no legal boundaries. However, a populated place may have a corresponding "civil" record, the legal boundaries of which may or may not coincide with the perceived populated place.
# Census − a statistical area delineated locally specifically for the tabulation of Census Bureau data (census designated place, census county division, unorganized territory, various types of American Indian/Alaska Native statistical areas).[
# Civil − a political division formed for administrative purposes ( borough, county, ]incorporated place
The United States Census Bureau defines a place as a concentration of population which has a name, is locally recognized, and is not part of any other place. A place typically has a residential nucleus and a closely spaced street pattern, and it fr ...
, municipality, parish
A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one o ...
, town, township)."[
Populated places may be specifically defined in the context of ]census
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses in ...
es and be different from general-purpose administrative entities, such as "place" as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau or census-designated place
A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only.
CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the count ...
s.
Geospatial modeling
In the field of geospatial predictive modeling, settlements are "a city, town, village, or other agglomeration of buildings where people live and work".
The Global Human Settlement Layer
GHSL
framework produces global spatial information about the human presence on the planet over time. This in the form of built up maps, population density maps and settlement maps. This information is generated with evidence-based analytics and knowledge using new spatial data mining technologies. The framework uses heterogeneous data including global archives of fine-scale satellite imagery, census data, and volunteered geographic information. The data is processed fully automatically and generates analytics and knowledge reporting objectively and systematically about the presence of population and built-up infrastructures. Th
GHSL
operates in an open and free data and methods access policy (open input, open method, open output).
Abandonment
The term "Abandoned populated places" is a ''Feature Designation Name'' in databases sourced by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and GeoNames.
Sometimes the structures are still easily accessible, such as in a ghost town
Ghost Town(s) or Ghosttown may refer to:
* Ghost town, a town that has been abandoned
Film and television
* ''Ghost Town'' (1936 film), an American Western film by Harry L. Fraser
* ''Ghost Town'' (1956 film), an American Western film by All ...
, and these may become tourist attractions. Some places that have the appearance of a ghost town, however, may still be defined as populated places by government entities.
A town may become a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it has failed, because of a government action, such as the building of a dam that floods the town, or because of natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, uncontrolled lawlessness, or war. The term is sometimes used to refer to cities, towns, and neighborhoods that are still populated, but significantly less so than in years past.
See also
* Administrative division
Administrative division, administrative unit,Article 3(1). country subdivision, administrative region, subnational entity, constituent state, as well as many similar terms, are generic names for geographical areas into which a particular, ind ...
* Colony
In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state' ...
*
* Informal settlement
Informal housing or informal settlement can include any form of housing, shelter, or settlement (or lack thereof) which is illegal, falls outside of government control or regulation, or is not afforded protection by the state. As such, the info ...
* List of Neolithic settlements
* Lost city
* Requirements for permanent settlements
* Settlement geography
Settlement geography is a branch of human geography that investigates the earth's surface's part settled by humans. According to the United Nations' Vancouver Declaration on Human Settlements (1976), "human settlements means the totality of the ...
References
External links
The Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) framework
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