create a large spider diagram showing the characteristics of urban settlements
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:China: since 2001 China has used a system of ‘statistical classification’ meaning that the definition of an ‘urban’ area is not fixed. Instead, it can change depending on the way the data is collected (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2002, and Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics, 2018)
Kenya: a “built-up and compact human settlement with a population of at least 2,000
people defined without regard to the local authority boundaries” (Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, 2012)
United Kingdom – “areas of urban land use of 20 hectares or more with 1,500 or more residents” (ONS, 2016)
United States: the US considers urban to refer to two types of area – Urbanized Areas (UAs) of 50,000 or more people, and Urban Clusters (UCs) of at least 2,500 and less than 50,000 people (US Census Bureau, 2016)
These definitions generally refer to population size and density. Other ways of classifying a place as urban are by the characteristics of an urban place, such as function, land use, hierarchy of settlement, and how the area grows.
The United Nations Population Division (UNPD) recognises how difficult it is to classify settlements, and that there is no fixed definition. This is mainly because as settlements grow, they are renamed, merge together and so on. The result is that deciding what is ‘urban’ is highly subjective, depending on the way that the urban area is classified, as shown in the diagram below. More details about urban growth can be found on the page ‘Growth processes of cities’ on this site.
