UNIT I INTRODUCTION

Elements of Human Settlements – human beings and settlements – nature shells& Net
work –their functions and Linkages – Anatomy & classification of Human settlements –
Locational, Resource based, Population size & Occupational structure.

EKISTICS:

The term Ekistics (coined by Konstantinos Apostolos Doxiadis in 1942) applies to the science of
human settlements. It includes regional, city, community planning and dwelling design. It involves
the study of all kinds of human settlements, with a view to geography and ecology — the physical
environment — and human psychology and anthropology, and cultural, political, and occasionally
aesthetics.

HUMAN SETTLEMENTS - GENERAL

The definition of human settlement is as given below:
“The fabric of human settlements consists of physical elements and services to which these
elements provide the material support. The physical components comprise shelter, i.e. the
superstructures of different shape, size, type and materials erected by mankind for security,
privacy, and protection from the elements and for his singularity within a community; infrastructure,
i.e. the complex networks designed to deliver or remove from the shelter people, goods, energy of
information. Services cover those required by a community for the fulfillment of its functions as a
social body, such as education, health, culture, welfare, recreation and nutrition.”

Human settlements means the totality of the human community - whether city, town or village - with
all the social, material, organizational, spiritual and cultural elements that sustain it. The fabric of
human settlements consists of physical elements and services to which these elements provide the
material support. The physical components comprise,
 Shelter, i.e. the superstructures of different shapes, size, type and materials erected by
mankind for security, privacy and protection from the elements and for his singularity within
 a community; 
 Infrastructure, i.e. the complex networks designed to deliver to or remove from the shelter
 people, goods, energy or information; 
 Services cover those required by a community for the fulfillment of its functions as a social
body, such as education, health, culture, welfare, recreation and nutrition. 

ELEMENTS OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS

NATURE

NETWORK MAN

SHELL SOCIETY

These elements always interact with one another. A human being has some invisible spheres
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around him. These spheres are the spheres of the senses like touch, smell, sight, hearing and also
supernatural or spiritual. The spiritual sphere is directly proportional to his intellect. People interact
with one another by direct interaction of these spheres. Human habitation requires a certain
amount of overlapping of these spheres, and the planning of habitation would mean, social
planning’. Human desires and endurances have remained the same throughout the years and
manifestations of which have changed by evolution.

EVOLUTION Of HUMAN SETTLEMENTS

The evolution of human settlements is a continuous cyclic process from the smallest, the room, to
the largest possible, the universal human settlement. The process are born, develop, decline and
die which can be compared to plant and animal which are everywhere in this universe.

Settlements may have an initial structure, which only allows for a certain degree of growth, but
nothing excludes the possibility of an expansion and transformation of this structure, which will
allow them to surpass the initial structural limitations. The human settlements have no pre-
determined death, though there is death in their activities, there will be born of another where the
active exists. .

The evolution of human settlements can be divided into five major phases:

1. Primitive non-organised human settlements (started with the evolution of man.)

2. Primitive organised settlements ( the period of villages - eopolis - which lasted
about 10,000 years.)
3. Static urban settlements or cities (polis - which lasted about 5,000-6,000 years.)
4. Dynamic urban settlements (dynapolis - which lasted 200 - 400 years.)
5. The universal city (ecumenopolis - which is now beginning.)

Primitive human settlements

Non - organised settlements
The man began to modify Nature and to settle temporarily or permanently in different location.
Probably began with fire, they went on to animal husbandry and the domestication of grazing
animals; afterwards came deforestation and agriculture, and with it, permanent human settlements.

Man had settled first in natural shelters such as hollows in the ground, hollow trees or shallow
caves, before he began to build his own primitive and unorganised habitat. After first exploiting
natural formations and transforming them into dwellings, by various changes and additions, he
began to create shells independent of, and unrelated to, pre-existing natural forms and their
boundary were within certain limit beyond which the settlement had no link and transportation.

For example observing the level of agriculture communities. The communities take up a smaller
area where they are agricultural, and a larger one where they are hunting and cattle-breeding
communities. Their nucleus under normal conditions is in the center of gravity; or of security
problem, in the safest place in their area, or even beyond their area of cultivation.

There are no transportation and communication lines between the communities. If we look at these
primitive non-organised communities on a macro scale, there consists of a nucleus which is the
built up part of the human settlement, and several parts which lead out into the open, thinning out
until they disappear – either because nobody goes beyond certain limits of the community or
because these trips take place so seldom that they would not be placed on the same scale of
densities. There is no physical lines connecting this primitive settlement with others; there are no
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networks between settlements.

Organised settlements
Man, some ten to twelve thousand years ago, began to enter the era of organised agriculture, his
settlements also began to show some characteristics of organisation. It required time and
acquisition of experience in organising the relationship between man and man, man and nature,
and finally expressing these relationships through cohesive forms of settlements.

In initial the human had one-room dwelling in circular form, to organise the relationship of
his community with other communities he expanded his dwelling by placing many round forms side
by side, then elongated to elliptical ones and at some point came to conclusion and adopted the
rectilinear forms. Due to the loss of space between them, they developed more regular shapes with
no space lost between them. The evolution reached the stage at which a rectilinear pattern
develops into a regular grid - iron one.

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In Nature evolution work towards a compression of circles and the gradual formation of polygonic
systems, the clearest form of which is the hexagon. In evolution of human settlements we see two
courses:
• On the micro-scale, where man must divide the land, construct one or more shells (rooms and
houses), and circulate within a built-up area (neighbourhood), the solution leads to a synthesis
at a right angle;
• On the macro-scale, where man must own and use space but not build it, and circulate within
it, although to a much lesser degree than before (usually non more than one movement to and
fro every day), man continues to follow the course of nature towards hexagonal patterns.

During this era of the development of human settlements the patterns or regional distribution of the
settlements differ depending on the phase of evolution and the prevailing conditions of safety, the
population still small, the villages can be found in the plains, near the rivers and near the sea.
When the population becomes dense, new patterns develop, and the villages come over to cover
the entire plain on the basis of the small hexagonal pattern and the hills and the mountains on a
larger hexagonal pattern. The development of land cultivation, the population might be larger, but
would still be smaller than that of the era of large population and full exploitation of the land, when it
would reach five hundred thousand or even one million.

Static urban settlements

At some point 5,000 or 6,000 years ago, the first urban settlement appeared as small cities in a
plain or as fortresses on hills and mountains. As settlements grew in size, man came to realise that
the principle of the single-nucleus was not always valid in the internal organisation of the total
shells of the community, at this single nodal point, which was adequate for the village and for small
cities, no longer sufficed. The first thing to happen was the expansion of the nucleus in one or more
directions; it was no longer limited to the settlement's center of gravity.

Example: The small settlement of Priene, in ancient Greece, where the central nucleus expanded
in two ways: first in a linear form along a main street which contained shops that would normally be
clustered in the central agora, the secondly through the decentralisation of some functions, such as
temples. In larger cities additional nodal points and central places gradually came into being within
the shells of the settlements - a phenomenon that is unique to human settlements.

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Dynamic urban settlement
Started in the seventeenth century and became apparent only a century later in all probability, it wall last for
another 100 or 200 years until we reach the next phase that of the universal settlement. In the dynamic
urban phase settlements in space are characterised by continuous growth. Hence, all their problems are
continuously intensified and new ones continuously created.

Dynamic settlements, created as a result of an industrial technological revolution, multiplying in number and
form, and now being created at an even higher rate. The evils described in them are the evils of yesterday
which are being multiplied today in a very dangerous manner. This makes the dynamic settlement
completely different from any other category of settlements and a real threat to humanity itself.

Example: London - atmospheric pollution may be so severe as to account for 4,000 deaths in a single week
of intense "fog". Hydrocarbons, lead, carcinogenic agents, deteriorating conditions of atmospheric
electricity -- all of these represent retrogressive processes introduced and supported by man.

The man's position is dangerous in the dynamic settlement, this can be shown through the following graph.

Dynapolis:
• First expansion of the urban settlement.
• 30 miles in diameter.
• All part of the land it covers is not sterilised.
• The microorganisms in the soil no longer exist.
• The original animal inhabit ants have largely been banished.
• Rivers are foul and the atmosphere is polluted.

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 • Climate and microclimate have retrogressed.

The first dynamic urban settlement - the early Dynapolis. This is the phase when small independent human
settlements when small independent human settlements with independent administrative units are
beginning to grow beyond their initial boundaries. From the economic point of view this development is
related to industrialisation, and from the technological point of view to the railroad era, which first made
commuting from distance points possible.

The settlements expands in all directions, instead of spreading only along the railway lines creating new
islands of dependent settlements around railway stations, as during the phase of the early Dynapolis. The
city is breaking its walls and spreading into the countryside in a disorgnised manner.

Metropolis I Dynametropolis:
The next phase of dynamic settlement is of metropolis, which incorporates several other urban and rural
settlements of the surrounding area.

The few metropolises from the past became static following a period of dynamic growth, then declined and
died. This was to a certain extent, true of ancient Rome in its last phases and Byzantine Constantinople -
which disintegrated to such a degree that the mobs in the streets became uncontrollable and sometimes
succeeded in imposing their will on the government. From the economic, social, administrative or
technological point of view, the fate of the historical metropolises has been dynamic growth, a static phase,
and then death. To base our experience on the history of cities, we must recognise the fact that a static
phase for a metropolis is the prelude of its decline and death. In such a case this should be said as a
dynamic metropolis, after losing its momentum for growth, becomes negatively dynamic.

To calculate the number of metropolises attributed to the effect of the railway and to the effect of the
automobile, we will find the latter to be much greater, out of all proportion to the number of the former.

Dynametropolis, continuing its course towards becoming a megalopolis.

Megalopolis I Dynamegalopolis:
The area on a large scale including more than one metropolis and many other urban settlements and it
cannot be static.
A megalopolis has the same external characteristics as the metropolis, the only difference being that every
phenomenon appears on a much larger scale. It is characteristic that all phenomenon of the development
of human settlements up to the metropolis shown on a 100 sq.km. Scale, for megalopolis would be
1,000sq.km.

Universal human settlement: Ecumenopolis

Regardless of whether dynamic settlements are simple (Dynapolis), or composite (metropolises
and megalopolises), they have been growing continuously during the last centuries and this is apparent
everywhere at present i.e. the whole Earth will be covered by one human settlement. The population
explosion, will be definitely be the most decisive factor in the next phase of human settlements.

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Settlement Characteristics

Area: How large the area of a settlement is.

Site: describes the actual land upon which a settlement is built.

Population: The size and type of people that live in a settlement.

Function: The function of a settlement relates to its economic and social development and refers to its main
activities.

Situation: describes where a settlement is located in relation to other surrounding features such as other
settlements, rivers and communications.

Shape: describes how the settlement is laid out. Its pattern.

Site Factors: Some sites have specific advantages that mean settlements developed in that place.

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Function of a Settlement:

The function of a Settlement relates to its economic and social development and refers to its main activities.

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Settlement Hierarchy

This refers to the arrangement of settlements in an order of importance , usually from many isolated
dwelling or hamlets at the base of the Hierarchy to a Conurbation.

The order of importance is based on the following:

 The area and population of the settlement (size)

 The range and number of services/functions within each settlement
 The relative sphere of influence of each settlement

Sphere of Influence

Sphere of Influence is defined as the area served by a particular settlement.

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The size of this sphere of influence depends on the size and functions of a town and its surrounding
settlement ,the transport facilities available and the level of competition from a rival settlement.

In general, the larger the settlement the larger the sphere of Influence.

Eg: London compared to Barnsley

Sphere of Influence is based upon two main principles:

Threshold Population: The minimum number of people needed to support a settlement or service.

Range: The maximum distance that people are prepared to travel to obtain a particular service.

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