the pace of advancement in urban settlement is faster as compared to rural settlement , but it comes to cost . write your opinion on this statement in 200-250 words
Answers
Explanation:
Introduction
The important UN-HABITAT (United Nations Human Settlements Programme) conference, which
was held in Vancouver in 1976, initiated ongoing progress in research on human settlements. The
challenges of rapid urban transformation seen over the last three decades have been distinct and are
presenting multidisciplinary scholars and managers in government with challenges that have never
been faced before [1]. Land use and land cover change (LUCC) has been widely recognized as a key
indicator in the field of global change [2,3]. Moreover, human settlements are considered an important
issue of LUCC, with an extensive range of implications for ecosystem and environment conservation
from human activity and construction land expansion due to rural–urban transformation [4–6]. The
changes of human settlement closely reflect the dynamic interaction between humankind and the
natural environment.
Researchers are focusing mainly on two regions, because of their potential vulnerability and the real
challenges they represent. The first region is the coastal zone. A large body of work, using the
principles and methods of landscape ecology, has explored the global characteristics of human
settlements [7], monitoring LUCC [8], environmental change [9], climate change [10,11] and
ecological effects [12]. The second region is urban development in developing countries. Most of the
developed countries have entered the mature stage of urbanization, which has stabilized, so the focus
of world urbanization has shifted to the developing countries. Most of the population growth expected
in urban areas will be concentrated in the cities of the undeveloped regions, especially in Asia and
Africa [13]. The study of human settlements mostly focuses on a number of aspects, including
settlement evolution in the metropolitan region [14–17], informal settlements [18–20], modeling
settlement patterns [21], socio-economic roles and sustainable management [22–25]. There is now a
consensus that contemporary society faces a large problem with rapid habitation growth [26]. Recent
studies have highlighted the importance of understanding human settlement dynamics for sustainability
purposes. Most research has been concerned with the analysis of the effects of human settlement
pattern change on the environment and ecology, while little has addressed the dynamic characteristics
of human settlements, especially rural settlements [27,28]. More important is the scarcity of studies
that analyze the differences between urban and rural settlements and the potential policy implications
that these differences could have on a region from an integrated perspective. Therefore, further insight
into the vital differences is required, and so this paper looks at the different patterns of change between
urban and rural settlements, both in terms of dynamics and of driving forces, drawing on an example
from a coastal area in east China, where rapid urbanization has occurred and rural-urban flow is
dramatic. The paper analyzes the transformation by asking the following research questions: What is
the difference in the spatial pattern change between urban and rural area at a regional scale? What is
the role of driving forces and the differences between urban and rural settlements in shaping the
different spatial development patterns?
To answer the above questions, an interdisciplinary methodology for identifying the spatio-temporal
characteristics and driving forces is applied to compare different types of urban and rural settlements.
The main aim is to examine the dynamics of human settlements, what kind of land use forms are
changing into residential land, and the socio-economic-institutional driving mechanisms. This will help
decision-makers to form rational policies for sustainable development of human settlements in thestudy area and other similar fast-developing regions. The study area lies in China’s coastal region,
which has characteristics of both ecological vulnerability and rapid rural-urban transition.
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Study Area
Ningbo is the second-largest city in Zhejiang Province, located in the middle of the coast of the
Chinese Mainland, southeast of the Yangtze River Delta and facing the East China Sea. It covers an
area of 9816 km2
, and is separated by Hangzhou Bay from Shanghai (China’s central city of economy
and finance), Hangzhou (the capital of Zhejiang Province) and Jiaxing (Figure 1). Due to its location,
Ningbo has been an important port city for foreign trade, and has achieved great progress in economic
development.