Explain the five types of urban settlements.
Answers
Depending on services available, size and functions rendered, urban centres are assigned as a town, city, million cities, conurbation, metropolis.
Town
The notion of ‘town’ can best be explained by relating it to ‘village’. Population size is not the only measure. Functional differences between villages and towns may not always be clearcut, but distinct functions such as manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail and professional services are present in towns.
City
A city may be viewed as a leading town, which has surpassed its local or regional competitors. Lewis Mumford had said, “ the city is, in fact, the physical form of the highest and most complex type of associative life”. Cities are much bigger than towns and have a larger number of commercial functions. They tend to have transportation terminals, influential financial institutions and provincial administrative offices. When the population passes the one million mark, it is assigned the status of a million city.
Conurbation
The word conurbation was given by Patrick Geddes (1915) and used for a large area of urban development that emerged from the merging of formerly separate towns or cities. Greater London, Chicago, Tokyo and Manchester are examples.
Million City
The number of million cities emerging all around the world has been rising. London reached the million mark in 1800, succeeded by Paris (1850), New York (1860), and by 1950 there were about 80 such cities. There were 162 million cities in the mid-70s, and there was a threefold rise in 2005 and the number touched 438. In 2016, there were around 512 cities with at least 1 million residents globally. By 2030, a predicted 662 cities will have at least 1 million inhabitants.
Megalopolis
This Greek word meaning “great city”, was generalised by Jean Gottman (1957) and signified ‘super- metropolitan’ area extending, as a union of conurbations. The urban landscape ranging from Boston in the north to south of Washington in the U.S.A. is the best-known example of a megalopolis.
Distribution of Mega Cities
A megacity or megalopolis is a common term for cities together with their outskirts with a population of more than 10 million people. New York was the first to achieve the status of a mega city by 1950 with a total population of approximately 12.5 million. The number of megacities is now 31 which is predicted to rise to reach 41. The number of megacities has risen in developing countries in the last 50 years in comparison to the developed countries.