Settlement geography

Rural settlement of Q'ero in the Andes.

Image LandSat of Manila Bay, a very concentrated metropolitan settlement area (in magenta).

The Geography of settlement represents a traditional subdiscipline of Geography and, specifically, of Population Geography, which investigates the structure and shape of the human settlement area, as well as settlement processes that produce the cultural landscape. Today it is a main component in the studies of Rural Geography and Urban Geography.

Analysis of the concept

The term poblamiento refers to the process of establishment or settlement in a specific place or area, by individuals or human groups from other parts. It constitutes the final result of the emigration process with the establishment of the emigrants in the place of immigration. However, the term settlement has a more precise meaning than the one indicated, since the final process of emigration with the establishment of emigrants in the place of immigration makes no difference between the settlement process and the migration process. Actually, the definition of settlement offered by the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy is quite concise and even ambiguous. In its first meaning, it defines the term as Action and effect of populating (). And in the second, presented as a Geography term, he points out that it is a "Process of settlement of a human group in the different regions of the Earth". This means that the action of the settlement is emigration to other places, while the effect of said settlement is the settlement in other places, which are generally uninhabited spaces where, in general, an economic policy will be developed, either be it agricultural (also called agricultural colonization), urban (Guiana City, Brasilia and many other examples), strategic (Gibraltar, Cartagena (Spain), some Hanseatic League cities) or industrial (Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, etc.). This is, as the RAE Dictionary points out, the definition of settlement in what is known as Geography of settlement.

Rural settlements

In the rural world we distinguish various types of settlement such as concentrated and dispersed, as well as various cases.

• The concentrated population is the grouping of the houses of the village in a particular place, leaving the rest so that it can be cultivated.
• In the dispersed population, the population lives in isolated houses, separated from each other. In some countries, the population is spread.
• The phased population, defined by E. G. Ravenstein (), could be regarded as a mixture of the other two.

The jump from a rural settlement to an urban one (city) occurs when, for various reasons, almost all the functions related to primary activities (agriculture, livestock, forestry, etc.) are replaced by other secondary activities (industry, crafts, etc.) or tertiary (commerce, services, transport, etc.). This is not usually very frequent since what predominates is the reverse process called rural exodus, a process that means the progressive arrival of population coming from rural settlements to the most important urban population centers, with which activities also increase. clearly urban and the depopulation of the rural environment tends to increase, favored by the increase in the size of the property and with the mechanization of the field.

These ideas are developed in the book by Ester Boserup who points out that with the increase in population and agricultural production, the concentration of the population in urban centers is practically inevitable. Thus, Boserup points out that technological change in agriculture occurs when the demographic density rate reaches a critical point, which not only increases demographic concentration in cities, but also modifies the situation in the countryside with the technical development, increased production and, above all, the diversification of the economy, with the start and growth of industrial and service companies.

Urban settlements

The highest degree of population concentration is found in cities or urban areas. It is a progressive process, when the conditions or level of resources in the area are favorable for such growth. A characteristic of European urban population is its high density of cities, with a great abundance of small and medium-sized urban centers. This urban structure, with an average distance of 16 km between cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants, differs markedly from that existing in the rest of the continents: in Asia, with a similar population density, the average distance is 29 km, while that in North America, with a slightly lower urbanization rate, the distance between cities triples (48 km) as a result of the abundance of large agglomerations.