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Notes on Town planning and Human settlements Compiled by CT.LAKSHMANAN b.arch., m.c.p.

HUMAN SETTLEMENTS - GENERAL The definition of human settlement is as given below: “The fabric of human settlements consists of physical elements and services to which these elements provide the material support. The physical components comprise shelter, i.e. the superstructures of different shape, size, type and materials erected by mankind for security, privacy, and protection from the elements and for his singularity within a community; infrastructure, i.e. the complex networks designed to deliver or remove from the shelter people, goods, energy of information. Services cover those required by a community for the fulfillment of its functions as a social body, such as education, health, culture, welfare, recreation and nutrition.” Human settlements means the totality of the human community - whether city, town or village - with all the social, material, organizational, spiritual and cultural elements that sustain it. The fabric of human settlements consists of physical elements and services to which these elements provide the material support. The physical components comprise, Shelter, i.e. the superstructures of different shapes, size, type and materials erected by

mankind for security, privacy and protection from the elements and for his singularity within a community;

Infrastructure, i.e. the complex networks designed to deliver to or remove from the shelter people, goods, energy or information;

Services cover those required by a community for the fulfillment of its functions as a social body, such as education, health, culture, welfare, recreation and nutrition.

ELEMENTS OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS

These elements always interact with one another. A human being has some invisible spheres around him. These spheres are the spheres of the senses like touch, smell, sight, hearing and also supernatural or spiritual. The spiritual sphere is directly proportional to his intellect. People interact with one another by direct interaction of these spheres. Human habitation requires a certain amount of overlapping of these spheres, and the planning of habitation would mean, social planning’. Human desires and endurances have remained the same throughout the years and manifestations of which have changed by evolution.

NATURE

MAN

SOCIETY

NETWORK

SHELLS

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Notes on Town planning and Human settlements Compiled by CT.LAKSHMANAN b.arch., m.c.p.

GROWTH AND DECAY OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS - GENERAL Primitive man lived in caves, tree-holes and treetops and fed himself on plants, fruits roots, animals and water, directly collected from nature, without much effort on his part. When his number increased and his food requirements became enormous he came out of the forests to live in the plains, to cultivate and make more food materials. Availability of water was the main criterion for selecting land for cultivation and habitation. This happened according to scientist, about 10,000 years back and that was the beginning of human settlements, when man made houses to live in and worked for his food. Thus it was a transition from cave to village. Protection from the vagaries of climate and wild animals was the main purpose of a house, rightly called a shelter. He built houses with whatever materials were available near about him, like mud, wood, reeds boughs, leaves and what not. For better protection and mutual help he used to live in groups, surrounded by the cultivated lands, which invariably were selected where water was available throughout the seasons.

This gave rise to villages or small human settlements, all of them near perennial fresh water sources like rivers, and lakes. Villages were also located on sites offering natural protection of elevated hills & terrains, islands and peninsulas. Wherever natural protection was lacking barricades and moats surrounded them. Later, when transportation of men and materials became necessary, seacoasts and riverbanks were selected for settlements. As we learn from history, early civilization spread along the fertile valleys of the Nile, tigres, Euphrates, Indus rivers etc. where water, food and transportation were at hand.

In all settlements, there were both natural and man-made elements like hills, valleys – buildings, roads etc. each settlement had its own definite boundaries. They were scattered throughout, especially along riverbanks and in plains, fed by rivers. Inter – relations and inter-actions between settlements, both near and far off, developed gradually and it gave rise to social, cultural, political, economic and many other institutions

Conflict between men and environment started when man began to change the environment for better convenience and better comfort. This conflict is a continuous process, and is continuing with all its ramifications supported by science and technology.

Man being aggressive in nature, did not easily adjust himself to be part of a self-disciplined community. Personal and group rivalries flared up within settlements. Survival of the fittest was the order of the day. The winner assumed the role of a leader and maintained discipline. When the leader gained more and more power and strength, several settlements came under him. He himself assumed titles of king or emperor. To protect himself and his kingdom, he wanted an army and a safe place to live. For this he established non-agricultural settlements, exclusively for himself, his

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Notes on Town planning and Human settlements Compiled by CT.LAKSHMANAN b.arch., m.c.p.

army and the people around him. Such settlements were fortified and moats built all around, for additional protection from attacking enemies. People from the villages, whose main occupation was agriculture, began to migrate to such urban centers, to get better employment and better wages. Further, the developments came out of the forts and moats, to accommodate more people and this gave rise to bigger settlements, what we call towns and cities.

Socio-economic and socio-cultural changes, as well as developments in science and technology influenced the life styles of the people and their quality of life. In the process, some settlements, perished, may be by war, floods or drying up of water sources and some other prospered becoming larger and larger, like our present day giant cities which we call metropolis, mega polis etc. this makes human settlements a part of history and every settlement has a history of its own.

The fundamental human needs, wherever one lives and whichever natural environment one has, are food, clothing and shelter apart from air & water. Shelter use to get the lowest priority from the very beginning of man’s existence. Till the recent past, shelter, especially in small settlements, was not a serious problem as the shelter requirements were quite simple and limited. There was no difficulty in getting a piece of land, either owned or rented.

They constructed their own houses with mutual help, making use of locally available materials and using their own houses with mutual help, making use of locally available materials and using their own labour.

The harmful impact of intensive urbanization, consequent to the industrial revolution, accelerated deterioration of the living environment. But in spite of all the efforts to improve the living environment in human settlements, the challenge of poverty, congestion and insanitation still remains in cities throughout the world. Man had made unprecedented progress during the current century in the fields of industry, Education, Health, Communication, Transportation etc. as a result of spectacular achievements in science and technology. But it is a paradox that the majority of the world’s population still does not have a shelter providing minimum privacy, and protection against the elements. The struggle for shelter still continues. A significant reason, for this lag is the population explosion followed by urban explosion.

EVOLUTION Of HUMAN SETTLEMENTS

The evolution of human settlements is a continuous cyclic process from the smallest, the room, to the largest possible, the universal human settlement. The process are born, develop, decline and die which can be compared to plant and animal which are everywhere in this universe.

Settlements may have an initial structure, which only allows for a certain degree of growth, but nothing excludes the possibility of an expansion and transformation of this structure, which will allow them to surpass the initial structural limitations. The human settlements have no pre-determined death, though there is death in their activities, there will be born of another where the active exists. .

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Notes on Town planning and Human settlements Compiled by CT.LAKSHMANAN b.arch., m.c.p.

The evolution of human settlements can be divided into five major phases:

1. Primitive non-organised human settlements (started with the evolution of man.) 2. Primitive organised settlements ( the period of villages - eopolis - which lasted

about 10,000 years.) 3. Static urban settlements or cities (polis - which lasted about 5,000-6,000 years.) 4. Dynamic urban settlements (dynapolis - which lasted 200 - 400 years.)

5. The universal city (ecumenopolis - which is now beginning.)

Primitive human settlements Non - organised settlements

The man began to modify Nature and to settle temporarily or permanently in different location. Probably began with fire, they went on to animal husbandry and the domestication of grazing animals; afterwards came deforestation and agriculture, and with it, permanent human settlements. Man had settled first in natural shelters such as hollows in the ground, hollow trees or shallow caves, before he began to build his own primitive and unorganised habitat. After first exploiting natural formations and transforming them into dwellings, by various changes and additions, he began to create shells independent of, and unrelated to, pre-existing natural forms and their boundary were within certain limit beyond which the settlement had no link and transportation.

For example observing the level of agriculture communities. The communities take up a smaller area where they are agricultural, and a larger one where they are hunting and cattle-breeding communities. Their nucleus under normal conditions is in the center of gravity; or of security problem, in the safest place in their area, or even beyond their area of cultivation.

There are no transportation and communication lines between the communities. If we look at these primitive non-organised communities on a macro scale, there consists of a nucleus which is the built up part of the human settlement, and several parts which lead out into the open, thinning out until they disappear – either because nobody goes beyond certain limits of the community or because these trips take place so seldom that they would not be placed on the same scale of densities. There is no physical lines connecting this primitive settlement with others; there are no networks between settlements.

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Notes on Town planning and Human settlements Compiled by CT.LAKSHMANAN b.arch., m.c.p.

Organised settlements Man, some ten to twelve thousand years ago, began to enter the era of organised agriculture, his settlements also began to show some characteristics of organisation. It required time and acquisition of experience in organising the relationship between man and man, man and nature, and finally expressing these relationships through cohesive forms of settlements.

In initial the human had one-room dwelling in circular form, to organise the relationship of his community with other communities he expanded his dwelling by placing many round forms side by side, then elongated to elliptical ones and at some point came to conclusion and adopted the rectilinear forms. Due to the loss of space between them, they developed more regular shapes with no space lost between them. The evolution reached the stage at which a rectilinear pattern develops into a regular grid - iron one.

In Nature evolution work towards a compression of circles and the gradual formation of polygonic systems, the clearest form of which is the hexagon. In evolution of human settlements we see two courses:

On the micro-scale, where man must divide the land, construct one or more shells (rooms and houses), and circulate within a built-up area (neighbourhood), the solution leads to a synthesis at a right angle;

On the macro-scale, where man must own and use space but not build it, and circulate within it, although to a much lesser degree than before (usually non more than one movement to and fro every day), man continues to follow the course of nature towards hexagonal patterns.

During this era of the development of human settlements the patterns or regional distribution of the settlements differ depending on the phase of evolution and the prevailing conditions of safety, the population still small, the villages can be found in the plains, near the rivers and near the sea. When the population becomes dense, new patterns develop, and the villages come over to cover the entire plain on the basis of the small hexagonal pattern and the hills and the mountains on a larger hexagonal pattern. The development of land cultivation, the population might be larger, but would still be smaller than that of the era of large population and full exploitation of the land, when it would reach five hundred thousand or even one million.

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Notes on Town planning and Human settlements Compiled by CT.LAKSHMANAN b.arch., m.c.p.

Static urban settlements At some point 5,000 or 6,000 years ago, the first urban settlement appeared as small cities in a plain or as fortresses on hills and mountains. As settlements grew in size, man came to realise that the principle of the single-nucleus was not always valid in the internal organisation of the total shells of the community, at this single nodal point, which was adequate for the village and for small cities, no longer sufficed. The first thing to happen was the expansion of the nucleus in one or more directions; it was no longer limited to the settlement's center of gravity.

Example: The small settlement of Priene, in ancient Greece, where the central nucleus expanded in two ways: first in a linear form along a main street which contained shops that would normally be clustered in the central agora, the secondly through the decentralisation of some functions, such as temples. In larger cities additional nodal points and central places gradually came into being within the shells of the settlements - a phenomenon that is unique to human settlements.

Dynamic urban settlement Started in the seventeenth century and became apparent only a century later in all probability, it wall last for another 100 or 200 years until we reach the next phase that of the universal settlement. In the dynamic urban phase settlements in space are characterised by continuous growth. Hence, all their problems are continuously intensified and new ones continuously created.

Dynamic settlements, created as a result of an industrial technological revolution, multiplying in number and form, and now being created at an even higher rate. The evils described in them are the evils of yesterday which are being multiplied today in a very dangerous manner. This makes the dynamic settlement completely different from any other category of settlements and a real threat to humanity itself.

Example: London - atmospheric pollution may be so severe as to account for 4,000 deaths in a single week of intense "fog". Hydrocarbons, lead, carcinogenic agents, deteriorating conditions of atmospheric electricity -- all of these represent retrogressive processes introduced and supported by man.

The man's position is dangerous in the dynamic settlement, this can be shown through the following graph.

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Notes on Town planning and Human settlements Compiled by CT.LAKSHMANAN b.arch., m.c.p.

Dynapolis: First expansion of the urban settlement. 30 miles in diameter. All part of the land it covers is not sterilised. The microorganisms in the soil no longer exist. The original animal inhabit ants have largely been banished. Rivers are foul and the atmosphere is polluted. Climate and microclimate have retrogressed.

The first dynamic urban settlement - the early Dynapolis. This is the phase when small independent human settlements with independent administrative units are beginning to grow beyond their initial boundaries. From the economic point of view this development is related to industrialisation, and from the technological point of view to the railroad era, which first made commuting from distance points possible.

The settlements expands in all directions, instead of spreading only along the railway lines creating new islands of dependent settlements around railway stations, as during the phase of the early Dynapolis. The city is breaking its walls and spreading into the countryside in a disorgnised manner.

Metropolis I Dynametropolis:

The next phase of dynamic settlement is of metropolis, which incorporates several other urban and rural settlements of the surrounding area.

The few metropolises from the past became static following a period of dynamic growth, then declined and died. This was to a certain extent, true of ancient Rome in its last phases and Byzantine Constantinople - which disintegrated to such a degree that the mobs in the streets became uncontrollable and sometimes succeeded in imposing their will on the government. From the economic, social, administrative or technological point of view, the fate of the historical metropolises has been dynamic growth, a static phase, and then death. To base our experience on the history of cities, we must recognise the fact that a static phase for a metropolis is the prelude of its decline and death. In such a case this should be said as a dynamic metropolis, after losing its momentum for growth, becomes negatively dynamic. To calculate the number of metropolises attributed to the effect of the railway and to the effect of the automobile, we will find the latter to be much greater, out of all proportion to the number of the former. Dynametropolis, continuing its course towards becoming a megalopolis. Megalopolis I Dynamegalopolis: The area on a large scale including more than one metropolis and many other urban settlements and it cannot be static. A megalopolis has the same external characteristics as the metropolis, the only difference being that every phenomenon appears on a much larger scale. It is characteristic that all phenomenon of the development of human settlements up to the metropolis shown on a 100 sq.km. Scale, for megalopolis would be 1,000sq.km. Universal human settlement: Ecumenopolis Regardless of whether dynamic settlements are simple (Dynapolis), or composite (metropolises and megalopolises), they have been growing continuously during the last centuries and this is apparent everywhere at present i.e. the whole Earth will be covered by one human settlement. The population explosion, will be definitely be the most decisive factor in the next phase of human settlements.

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Notes on Town planning and Human settlements Compiled by CT.LAKSHMANAN b.arch., m.c.p.

INFLUENCE OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS IN DEVELOPMENT OF A SETTLEMENT

A town planner needs, among other things, specific data to base his proposals in respect of the type and number of dwelling units in a locality or a town. For this purpose, it is essential to have a clear idea of the population structure and condition of existing housing and future housing trends pertaining to various income groups, together with a realistic picture of the economic situation. He has further to think in terms of social and geographic grouping of the dwelling units while preparing the layouts, and place such amenities and services as schools, clubs, shops, places of amusement, etc., at the disposal of the community. The data for provision of these amenities and services on the right scale has to be supplied by the sociologist.

Information regarding population structure and trends is not generally available in all details from the census reports. For instance, these reports do not give any idea of the accommodation in use by families, and whether the occupation of the same is voluntary or compulsory. I.e. dictated by circumstances. In the former case, people live together because they are members of a family. In the latter case they do so by force of circumstances such as economic difficulties or shortage of accommodation. Information on such matters is of vital importance to the planner to arrive at the volume of new housing required. If his proposals are not based on factual data, they are likely to be unrealistic and, as a rule, fall short of requirements

Further, the actual volume of housing required cannot be correctly determined by collecting only the above-mentioned data. Population characteristics and trends have also to be ascertained. These are not easy to be understood on the basis of birth and death rates alone, because people leave as well as come to a particular town or a locality due to economic and various other considerations, which are largely dependent on the prosperity or otherwise of the town. The state and national plans, which allocate industrial undertakings in the various parts of the country, also play their part in this respect. Only when such information is readily available, the future needs can be forecast with reasonable accuracy and provision therefore can be made in the planning proposals.

A further consideration while formulating housing proposals pertains to population trends of different localities, which relates to moving out elsewhere due to increase in the size of the family. Children grow up, get married and raise families of their own. Conversely, daughters get married and leave the parental households. This sometimes results in diminution of the family size. When people leave the parental households as a result of growth in the size of the family it is essential to know how far away they are prepared to shift and with what frequency. This kind of data is not easy to collect, but unless it is made available, it is difficult for the majority of households and only the affluent people can afford to find additional accommodation near their previous dwelling units. In many cases, such people shift to better but distant localities where the environment is pleasant and more congenial.

When towns are in the process of replanning or redevelopment, it is essential to ensure that services like schools, clinics, shops and cultural institutions are provided in proper relationship with residential accommodation. It is also desirable to keep the size of development within reasonable limits, because bigness lacks intimacy and social relationship among people. It is to avoid situations like these that the concept of the neighbourhood unit has come into existence.