What is the definition of human settlements?

This content should also be in the second volume P40-42 of Geography of Senior One in People's Education Press.

The floorboard of various forms of human settlements. The word "settlement" refers to ancient villages. For example, China's Record of the History of Han Dynasty records: "It's harmless for a long time, and it will become a settlement with a little construction". In modern times, it refers to all settlements. Settlement is the research object of settlement geography.

The settlement originated in the middle of Paleolithic Age and gradually evolved with the progress of human civilization. Under the primitive commune system, the settlement with clan as the unit is a pure agricultural village. After entering the slave society, urban settlements appeared, and residents did not rely directly on agriculture for their livelihood. However, commodity economy does not occupy a major position in slavery society and feudal society, and rural settlements have always been the main form of settlements. After entering the capitalist society, cities or urban settlements have developed widely, and rural settlements have gradually lost their advantages and become the bottom part of the settlement system.

Settlements usually refer to fixed settlements, and only a few are mobile. Residential area is composed of various physical elements, such as buildings, structures, roads, green spaces, water sources and so on. The larger the scale, the more complex the composition of material elements. The architectural appearance of settlements varies with different lifestyles. For example, the long houses of Iban people in Borneo, the round earth buildings in western China, caves in the Loess Plateau, and underground or semi-underground houses in arid areas such as Central Asia and North Africa.

Settlements have different plane forms, which are restricted by economic, social, historical and geographical conditions. Villages with a long history are mostly reunion, and regional immigrant villages with late development are often loose. Urban residential areas also have various plane forms because of different local conditions. The main direction of settlement economic activities determines the nature of settlements. The basic content of rural settlement economic activities is agriculture, which is customarily called village. The economic activities in urban residential areas are diverse, and the relationship between various economic activity variables is

Classification As early as 184 1 years ago, J.G. Cole had noticed the comparative study of different kinds of settlements in the book "The Relationship between Human Transportation, Residence and Terrain". However, for more than half a century, there is no systematic settlement classification. At the beginning of the 20th century, after the appearance of urban geography, settlement classification received further attention. Settlement geography first divides settlements into villages and cities. Then it is further divided by category. Because settlements have their own characteristics such as origin, historical development, geographical conditions, morphological structure, scale, economic activities and functions, it is difficult to formulate a comprehensive classification system that includes all factors and attributes, and most of them are divided according to the functions or morphological characteristics of settlements, supplemented by appropriate indicators. Since the 1920s, the research on urban classification has far surpassed that on rural settlements. Especially in the functional classification, it is more prominent. Since M. Aurousseau of the United States put forward the classification of qualitative description in 192 1, it has gone through the process of general description, statistical description, economic analysis and even multivariate analysis, among which the representative figures of statistical description and statistical analysis are C. D Harris in 1943 and H. 1955.

① Rural residential areas. According to economic activities, it can be divided into agricultural settlements, forestry settlements, pastoral villages, fishing villages and villages with more than two kinds of economic activities. According to the plane form, it can be divided into reunion type (village gathering), namely block settlement (village group), strip settlement (village road, street village) and circular settlement (village circle). Decentralized, that is, point-like settlements (decentralized villages)

② Urban settlement. According to the form, it can be divided into centralized type (single city) and group type (twin cities, three cities, groups and groups). According to the functional division, there are many schemes, among which the three representative schemes are Harris Classification (1943): according to the statistical data of employees in various industries in the city, the percentage of employees in one industry in all industries is divided into nine categories: processing industrial cities, retail commercial centers, multi-functional cities, wholesale commercial centers, transportation centers, mining cities, university cities, and entertainment and leisure. G. Schwartz's classification (1959): Firstly, cities are divided into three categories: cities with general functions, cities with special functions, and cities like cities. Then, cities with special functions are divided into five categories: city-like settlements are divided into eight categories: traditional crafts and industrial settlements, settlements caused or transformed by modern industries, traffic settlements, tourist settlements, residential settlements, military settlements, religious settlements and cultural and educational settlements. Saushkin's classification (1960): According to the status of cities in regional social division of labor, they are divided into three categories: cities participating in regional division of labor and cities with interregional division of labor. Cities closely connected with the international market are further divided into five categories according to the nature of production: cities producing raw materials, fuels and power, cities producing intermediate products, cities producing finished products, 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 settlement types such as urbanized villages and market towns between them.