What is the exact meaning of settlement?

This content, should also be in the first year of high school geography, the next book, the humanistic version of the P40-42

The general term for various forms of human settlements. The word "settlement" refers to villages in ancient times, such as the Chinese "Han Shu - □ Wu Zhi" records: "or long harmless, a little room and house, and then become a settlement". In modern times, it refers to all settlements in general. The settlement is the research object of settlement geography.

Overview Settlements originated in the middle of the Paleolithic period, and gradually evolved with the progress of human civilization. Under the primitive communal system, the clan-based settlements were purely agricultural village communities. After slavery, urban-type settlements emerged where residents did not rely directly on agriculture for their livelihood. However, in slave and feudal societies, the commodity economy did not play a major role, and rural settlements were always the main form of settlements. After entering the capitalist society, the city or city-type settlements developed widely, and the rural settlements gradually lost their advantages and became a low-level component of the settlement system.

Settlements usually refer to fixed settlements, and only very few are mobile. The settlement consists of a variety of buildings, structures, roads, green spaces, water sources and other material elements, the larger the scale, the more complex the composition of the material elements. The architectural appearance of a settlement varies according to the mode of habitation. For example, Borneo Iban people's large long house, China's western Fujian region of the earth round building, the Loess Plateau kiln, Central Asia, North Africa and other dry areas of the underground or semi-underground shelter, some of the water along the river shelter, nomadic areas of the tent, etc., are more special settlement appearance.

The settlement has different plane form, it is subject to economic, social, historical and geographical conditions. Long history of the village is mostly reunion type, the development of late regional immigrant villages tend to be scattered type. Urban settlements also exist in a variety of plan forms due to different conditions in different places. The direction of the main economic activities of the settlement determines the nature of the settlement. The basic content of economic activity in rural settlements is agriculture, which is customarily called village. Urban settlement economic activity content of a wide variety of economic activities, the relationship between the various economic activity variables, reflecting the functional characteristics and nature of the city.

Classification As early as 1841, J.G. Cole, in his book The Relation of Human Traffic Habitation to Topography, has paid attention to the comparative study of different kinds of settlements. However, there has been no systematic classification of settlements for more than half a century since then. in the early 20th century, after the emergence of urban geography, the problem of settlement classification was further emphasized. Settlement geography firstly divides settlements into villages and cities, and then further divides them according to categories. Since settlements have their own origin, historical development, geographical conditions, morphological structure, scale, and economic activities and functions, it is difficult to formulate a comprehensive classification system that includes all the factors and attributes, and most of them are classified according to the functional or morphological characteristics of settlements, supplemented by appropriate indicators.Since the 1920s, the depth of urban classification research has far exceeded that of the classification of countryside settlements, especially in the Functional classification is more prominent. Since the classification of qualitative description was proposed by M. Oruso of the United States in 1921, it has gone through the process of general description, statistical description, economic analysis and even multivariate analysis, in which the representatives of statistical description and statistical analysis are the classification of C.D. Harris of the United States in 1943 and the classification of H.J. Nelson in 1955, and the multivariate analysis is the 60's after the econometric method was applied to the study of urban geography as a product. Until now, there is no set of recognized principles and systems for cluster classification or even urban classification.

①Rural settlements. According to economic activities can be divided into agricultural settlements, forestry settlements, pastoral villages, fishing villages and villages with more than two economic activities. According to the plane form can be divided into agglomeration type (set of villages), that is, block-shaped settlement (regiment village), strip-shaped settlement (road village, street village), ring-shaped settlement (ring village); scattered type, that is, point-shaped settlement (scattered village).

② urban settlement. According to the form can be divided into centralized form (single city), group form (twin city, triple city, strip group, mass group). There are many schemes according to the functional division, among which three representative schemes are: Harris's classification (1943): based on the statistics of the number of people employed in each industry in the city, and based on the percentage of the number of people employed in one industry in the total number of people employed in each industry, the American city is divided into nine categories: processing industry city, retail business center, multi-functional city, wholesale business center, transportation center, mining city, school city, transportation center, mining city, school city, transportation center, mining city, school city, school city, school city, school city, school city, school city, school city, school city, school city, school city, school city. G. Schwartz's classification (1959): firstly, cities are divided into 3 categories: general function cities, special function cities and city-like settlements. Then the cities with special functions are divided into 5 categories: those arising from political functions, those influenced by cultural functions, those determined by economic and transportation functions, national capitals, metropolises and world cities; and the city-like settlements are divided into 8 categories: traditional craft and industrial settlements, settlements caused by or transformed by modern industries, transportation settlements, tourist settlements, residential settlements, military settlements, religious settlements, and cultural and educational settlements. □.Г. Shoshkin's classification (1960): cities are divided into three categories according to their position in the territorial division of social labor: cities participating in the intra-regional division of labor, cities having a greater role in the inter-regional division of labor, cities with close ties to the international market. According to the nature of production, they are divided into five categories: cities producing raw materials, fuels and power, cities producing intermediate goods, cities producing manufactured goods, cities with transportation functions, and unproductive cities. These types of cities can also be subdivided into groups.

In addition to rural settlements and urban settlements, there are urbanized villages and market towns and other settlement types in between.