Question

settlement in hierarchy

Answer 1

Settlement Hierarchy

The ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, and Mayans all developed architectural styles based around pyramids. How did they all learn to do this? Was it aliens? No. A pyramid is simply the easiest way to stack lots of rocks on top of each other without the roof collapsing. You start with a large base and work your way up to a narrow pinnacle. Not only is this structure good for building, but it's also pretty useful for categorizing information. As you may have noticed, we organize a lot of things into pyramids (the food pyramid, the exercise pyramid, etc.). What if we need to organize information about places where people live by size and number of services? There's a pyramid for that too. It's called the settlement hierarchy.

Function of a Settlement Hierarchy

A settlement hierarchy is a chart used to model the relationship between various human population centers based on their size, population, and available services. To really understand this however, we need to first break down the term ''settlement hierarchy'' itself. A settlement is a place where people live. Throughout human history, there have been permanent settlements and temporary settlements, large ones and small ones. A hierarchy is a ranking of items. So, a settlement hierarchy is a ranking of settlements. This term, used primarily in the UK, is problematic for some people since a hierarchy can sometimes imply that the things on top are better than things on the bottom. Keep in mind that this is not an actual goal of the settlement hierarchy.

Settlement hierarchy chart

What does a settlement hierarchy look like? On the bottom you have the settlement with the lowest population and therefore the lowest number of expected services. In general, however, we expect these to be the most commonly occurring settlements since they require less effort to sustain. As you move up the chart, the settlements grow in size and services but also become less frequent. So, we depict the broad and common settlements as wide bars and the large but uncommon ones as progressively smaller bars, slowly but surely building up a pyramid of settlements.

LevelsIsolated Place

Now, let's look at the levels of a settlement hierarchy. The base of this chart is the isolated place, a settlement with only a few households. Isolated places require very little in the way of services and may have none at all.

Hamlet

Above that is a slightly larger and slightly less common settlement called a hamlet. Hamlets generally have populations of 100 people or less and might have a few very basic services.

Village

If we add a few more people and expand the borders a bit, our hamlet becomes a village. Villages have a few hundred people, making them large enough to contain basic services like post offices, gas stations, or churches.

Small Town & Large Town

Our next size of settlement is the small town, which has a population of between 1,000 and 20,000 people. Small towns have enough basic services that people don't have to always leave this settlement in order to fulfill their basic needs. This means that basic stores, grocers, and restaurants are available. When a town's population grows to be over 20,000 people, it can become a large town and attract more varieties of these services.

City

Now we get to the levels with which many of you are probably familiar. Once a settlement's population increases to over 100,000 people, it's officially considered a city. Cities have enough people and space to move beyond basic services and provide facilities for leisure and recreation as well, such as athletic arenas, concert stadiums, and other venues. They also attract more department stores, featuring a wider range of prices since cities tend to house both the very wealthy and very poor.