URBAN SETTLEMENTS

AS90332 Explain an urban settlement

How Settlements Were Chosen

Rural Settlements

• Rural Settlements (Individual farmhouses/ hamlets/villages)

We are Focussing on Urban Settlements

Places where people are in closeproximity to each other and able

to to exchange goods and services

World CitiesSelected criteria (amongst other things):

• Large populations, • Significant financial capacity• Hosting headquarters for international

organisations• Significant transport infrastructure• Based on quality of life • Cities containing World Heritage Sites

of historical and cultural significance

Percentage of Tenants in Urban Areas

Approximately 70 percent of New Zealand’s 2001 Census usually resident population count (2,654,850 people) lived in main urban areas.

Statistics NZ Urban Classification

NZ’s Urban Classification

Main urban areas are very large and centred on a city or main urban centre. They have a minimum population of 30,000 e.g. Whangarei, Auckland, Hamilton, Palmerston North, Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch, Dunedin Satellite urban communities are defined as urban areas (other than main urban areas) where 20 percent or more of the usually resident employed population's workplace address is in a main urban area. For example, Pukekohe, Lincoln, Rolleston

Independent Urban Area This category identifies towns and settlements without significant dependence on main urban centres e.g. Westport

How Settlements Were Chosen

Historical Timeline

• Rank the cards in order• Complete the gap – fill activity• Complete page 21 in text book ‘Urban

Settlements’• If you finish early complete the exercise

on page 22 (flow diagram at the bottom of the page)

Primate CitiesIf the largest settlement in a country or region is much larger then other settlements it is a PRIMATE CITY.Has a dominant role in the country’s or region’s political, economic and social life

MEXICO CITY →

Why use the rank size rule?• The rank size rule states mathematically the relationship between a

settlement’s size and its rank in the urban order. It suggests what the relationship would be, based on the rank of the settlement.

• How do we do this?• Rank populations of all urban settlements in a country from highest to

lowest• The population of the third ranked city should be 1/3 the size of the

population of the the largest one, the population of the eighth ranked, 1/8 of that of the largest settlement etc.

• BUT – it is very rare to find that a country’s urban settlements fit the rank size rule closely, but there are three general patterns that do occur…