Settlement geography
Topic: Human Geography: Nature, Scope and Approaches · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 1 "Human Geography: Nature and Scope"
Meaning
Settlement geography is a field of human geography. Its sister discipline is urban and rural planning. It studies settlements, which are the places where people live. It looks at their types, patterns, sites and functions. It covers both villages and towns, and asks why houses cluster in some places but scatter in others.
Example
In the fertile Ganga plain, houses stand close together in compact villages. In the hilly areas of Uttarakhand, homes spread out in small hamlets along slopes. Settlement geography links these patterns to land, water and safety.
Don't confuse with
- Urban geography: it deals only with towns and cities. Settlement geography covers rural and urban settlements together.