Rural and Urban Habitats: Classification and Morphology

Rural and Urban Habitats

1. The rural habitat and urban habitat. We discussed the rural habitat where the population lives in the countryside. According to how buildings are distributed, the following rural habitat types are distinguished:

• The scattered or dispersed settlement: Refers to the distribution of residential and production areas (such as factories and warehouses).
• The concentrated settlement: Characterized by the clustering of buildings, hardly leaving any empty spaces.
• Intermediate situations: There are two situations between the dispersed and concentrated settlement:
  • The interlayer dispersed settlement: A type dispersed over the territory, but with small nuclei where houses are concentrated (similar to a relaxed concentrated center around a church).
  • The settlement in small villages: These are distributed in the free areas between territories, leaving space for both.

Urban Habitat Characteristics

Discussing the urban habitat means talking about the city. Several aspects are taken into account:

• Population criterion: There are three categories of municipalities: the city (which has more than 10,000 inhabitants), intermediate (from 2,000 to 10,000 inhabitants), and rural (with less than 2,000 inhabitants).
• Functional criterion: The town is a locality specifically specialized in industrial and service activities; in contrast, a rural area would be dedicated to farming activities.
• Spatial continuity criteria: The city is a reality that matches directly with how the territory expands massively and often seamlessly.
• Morphological criteria: The city is defined by a series of buildings of a greater tonnage than rural ones and by relevant institutions (such as municipalities).
• Area of influence: Urban areas have a layout and influence that spread beyond their boundaries.
• Cultural criteria: This is the most important. There is an urban culture distinct from rural culture. This culture is characterized by accelerated life patterns, a taste for change, consumption, and different ways of thinking about leisure and social relations.

Urban Morphology and City Plans

1.2 Urban morphology: Urban geography is dedicated to the study of cities. Urban morphology is the portion of urban geography that analyzes the structure of the city from its spatial layout and image. There are five types of backgrounds:

1. Irregular map: Streets where it is more difficult to differentiate the most important ones.
2. Linear plan: Elongated, the product of adaptation to a valley or river.
3. Checkered flat: The streets cut at right angles (grid).
4. Radiocentric plan: The result of urban growth when produced from successive concentric crowns around a point.
5. Compound map: When a locality has a plane with two or more dominant previous typologies, it is considered composite or mixed.