Rural and Urban Settlements: Types, Communities, and Analysis

Rural Settlement

Types of Rural Settlement:

• Dispersed Settlement: Population lives in houses, farms, hamlets, and villages scattered around the field.
• Concentrated Settlement: The houses are grouped together, forming villages with amenities like shops and schools.
• Settlement Interlayer: Intermediate between the foregoing, presents isolated buildings, including town centers.

Dispersed Settlement Classes: Buildings

• House or Farm: Building isolated where people do farming activities.
• Farmhouse: Very small group of houses, accompanied by auxiliary constructions.
• Village: Small unit of population, less than a town, comprising houses and other auxiliary buildings.

Rural Communities

Rural communities are the basic units of settlement in rural areas. They can be:

• Linear Street or Village: The houses are located on both sides of a communication channel.
• Concentrated or Nuclear: Houses are located around a central core (square).
• Radial: The houses are concentrated around a central core, from which several radial roads extend.

Depending on their relation to agricultural activities:

• Farm or Fishing Village: A small hamlet.
• Agro-city: A large town where there are several services and urban elements.
• Residential: Can be regarded as a prolongation of the urban environment in rural areas.

Roads in Rural Areas

• Rural Roads: Communication of settlement and cultivated areas.
• Livestock Routes: Passages for livestock.

Buildings: The House

Presents different structural elements, depending on local climatic conditions, agricultural practices in the area, and the existing building materials. They are often made of wood in mountainous areas or located on flat terrain.

Urban Settlement

Urban settlement is the result of a process of population concentration in cities.

The Growth of Cities

Current growth results in large urban centers. Among them are:

• Metropolitan Area: Consists of a central core, called Metropolis. The metropolis centralizes administrative, economic, and cultural functions.
• Conurbation: Occurs when two or more nearby cities unite to form a single urban complex.
• Megalopolis: The union of several conurbations.

The Urban Hierarchy

The extension of the area of influence of each city allows for an urban hierarchy. The set of hierarchical cores and interrelated areas is an urban network.

Analysis of the City

Location and Situation

1. Location: The place in which a city sits (e.g., on a hill).
2. Situation: Refers to the geographic environment or location of the city with regard to other places.

Urban Layout

It is a graphic representation of the distribution of built-up areas (dwellings) and spaces (streets).

• Orthogonal Plane (Grid or Checkerboard): Presents straight streets intersecting at right angles. Advantages: extended without difficulty, facilitates the administrative division of the city, allows the construction of regular building blocks. Disadvantages: difficulty of circulation and does not fit all reliefs.
• Radio-centric Level: Characterized by the existence of a central point from which a series of streets and roads radiate. Advantages: ease of communication between center and periphery, can adapt to relief. Disadvantages: poor circulation.
• Irregular Layout: Features did not respond to a defined form. Advantages: tourist attraction. Disadvantages: difficult vehicle traffic due to narrowness and lack of wide open space.

Urban Buildings

Old buildings on several floors are found in the historic centers of cities. In the business district, consisting of several floors and high altitude, is the skyscraper. The first skyscraper was in Chicago.

• Single-Family Dwellings: Isolated or detached buildings, one or two stories, inhabited by people with a high level of resources.
• Slums: Spontaneous construction on the outskirts of large cities, especially in the poorest countries (e.g., favelas in Brazil).

Transformations

Mountainous rural areas and the interior of the peninsula were affected by the rural exodus. Rural communities located in coastal areas experience a radical transformation (fishing villages becoming urbanized). Rural populations near large cities have taken on urban functions and are part of metropolitan areas.