Settlement is a revolution in the life history of human beings. It brought so many changes in culture and civilisation. With the beginning of Agriculture man became sedentary from nomadic life. Production of food and practicing agriculture is the main source of income.
From the sedentary life, the production increased and which leads to new profession like weavers, potters, metal workers, gold smiths, black smiths etc., the diversity goods and surplus agriculture products started exporting to other places and nations.
In this course ports and port cities emerged along with aerotropolis. It leads to urbanisation. Urbanisation is the place of employment and place of problems also.
Main points
* The way we organise ourselves and our living spaces in a place is called settlement.
* Early humans hunted and gathered their food. That is why they were called hunter gatherers, they were nomadic.
* For about 1.8 lack years, humans lived in bands (groups) as hunters and food gatherers.
* Agriculture started only 10,000 years ago. As agriculture progressed, people organised their life around patterns observed in nature.
* Production of food and practising agriculture has brought huge changes in human life styles.
* As settlements became larger, they also became more complex because there were more functions to be performed.
* Basic concepts of kinds of places attracted settlements:
i) Site
ii) Situation
iii) The history of the place
* Site refers to the characteristics of the place, its topography, altitude, water characteristics, types of soils, security, shelter from natural forces and so on.
* Today Delhi is the second largest city with more than 1,60,00,000 people. In 1951 this was near 20,00,000.
* In Delhi, the areas continue without being accepted as legal settlements such as the "Juggijhopdi" clusters and unauthorised colonies.
* Every city usually has a master plan to design and allocate different types of areas. In any city there should be housing areas, markets, schools, industrial areas, office areas, parks and recreational areas and so on.
* Cities such as Mumbai and Chennai were further developed by the colonial powers to better exploit the natural resources of India.
* Coastal places were of immense significance for colonial powers because they could build ports there. These ports would enable export of raw materials to the colonising country.
* Over the centuries, Visakhapatnam's population has grown significantly. This growth is a result of the importance of Visakhapatnam as a port city.
* As settlements became more and more diversified in their characteristics, they also became more and more complex.
* In India, nearly 350 million i.e. one third of population lives in cities and towns.
* People have been increasingly taking up non-agriculture work and living in cities and towns this is called urbanisation.
* Today the number of villages has increased to 6.4 lakhs and about 850 million people live in these villages.
* Three cities, Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata accommodate more than 10 million people each. There are more than 50 cities, that have population of one million.
* The census of India organises settlements in India using certain criteria.
* In aerotropolis the Airport functions as a city in its own right. Many facilities like hotels, shopping, entertainment, food, business, conferencing etc., are provided right there
