Types of Rural Settlement
Rural settlements are categorized based on the built-up area and inter-house distance.
In India, a compact or clustered village is common, but other forms exist due to factors like physical features, cultural aspects, and security concerns.
There are four main types of rural settlements in India:
Clustered or nucleated: Houses are closely packed together.
Semi-clustered or fragmented: Houses are spread out but still have some clustering.
Hamleted: Small, scattered hamlets exist near each other.
Dispersed or isolated: Houses are spread far apart, with large distances between them.
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Clustered Settlements
Clustered rural settlements are compact or closely built-up areas of houses, with the general living area distinct and separated from surrounding farms, barns, and pastures.
They are often found in infertile alluvial plains and in the northeastern states, and can present recognizable patterns or geometric shapes, such as rectangular, radial, or linear.
People may live in compact villages for security or defense reasons, such as in the Bundelkhand region of central India and in Nagaland.
In Rajasthan, scarcity of water has necessitated compact settlements for maximum utilization of available water resources.
Clustered settlements are generally found in areas with fertile alluvial plains, and are characterized by intervening streets that present recognizable patterns or geometric shapes.
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Semi-Clustered Settlements
Semi-clustered or fragmented settlements can occur due to clustering in a restricted area of dispersed settlement or segregation/fragmentation of a large compact village.
In the latter case, the land-owning and dominant community typically resides in the central part of the main village, while people of lower strata and menial workers settle on the outer flanks.
This pattern is common in the Gujarat plain and some parts of Rajasthan.
The figure provided illustrates this settlement pattern, with the land-owning community in the central cluster and the lower strata on the outer edges.
The main village is likely to have been more compact in the past, with one or more sections choosing or being forced to move away.
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Hamleted Settlements
Settlements can be fragmented into separate units, known as panna, para, palli, nagla, dhani, etc., based on local terminology.
This fragmentation is often driven by social and ethnic factors.
Such fragmented villages are commonly found in the middle and lower Gangaplain, Chhattisgarh, and lower valleys of the Himalayas.
The segmentation of large villages is motivated by the need to accommodate various social and ethnic groups.
This phenomenon is more prevalent in certain regions of the country.
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Dispersed Settlements
Dispersed or isolated settlement pattern in India is characterized by isolated huts or hamlets of a few huts in remote jungles or on small hills.
This pattern is often caused by the extremely fragmented nature of the terrain and land resource base of habitable areas.
Areas of Meghalaya, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Kerala have this type of settlement.
Dispersed settlements can also be found in remote jungles or on small hills with farms or pasture on the slopes.
Extreme dispersion of settlement is often found in areas with challenging terrain and land resource base.
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Urban Settlements
Urban settlements are typically larger and more compact than rural settlements.
They are involved in a wide range of non-agricultural economic and administrative functions.
Cities are functionally linked to rural areas, facilitating the exchange of goods and services through direct and indirect connections.
Villages and cities are interconnected, and so are cities with each other.
The definition of towns can be found in Chapter 10 of the book “Fundamentals of Human Geography.”
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Evolution of Towns in India
The text provides data on population and decadal growth of certain towns and cities in India, based on the Census of India in 2011.
Jamshedpur is given as an example of a town that evolved based on modern industries after 1850.
After India’s independence, towns such as Chandigarh, Bhubaneswar, Gandhinagar, Dispur, and others were developed as administrative headquarters.
Industrial centers like Durgapur, Bhilai, Sindri, and Barauni were also developed.
Some older towns developed as satellite towns around metropolitan cities, such as Ghaziabad, Rohtak, and Gurugram around Delhi.
With increasing investment in rural areas, a large number of medium and small towns have developed all over the country. (No equations or specific formulae are provided in the text.)
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Urbanisation in India
Urbanization in India is measured by the percentage of urban population to total population.
In 2011, the level of urbanization in India was 31.16%, which is low compared to developed countries.
The total urban population in India has significantly increased, rising eleven-fold during the twentieth century.
The growth of urban population and urbanization has been influenced by the enlargement of urban centers and emergence of new towns.
However, the growth rate of urbanization has slowed down in the last two decades.
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Functional Classification of Towns
Indian cities and towns can be classified into administrative, industrial, transport, commercial, mining, garrison, educational, and religious/cultural categories based on their dominant or specialized functions.
The Smart Cities Mission aims to promote cities with core infrastructure, a clean and sustainable environment, and a decent quality of life for its citizens. It focuses on sustainable and inclusive development and the application of smart solutions to infrastructure and services.
Examples of educational towns include Roorki, Varanasi, Aligarh, Pilani, and Allahabad, which started as centers of education and grew into major campus towns.
Religious and cultural towns such as Varanasi, Mathura, Amritsar, Madurai, Puri, Ajmer, Pushkar, Tirupati, Kurukshetra, Haridwar, and Ujjain came to prominence due to their religious and cultural significance.
Tourist towns like Nainital, Mussoorie, Shimla, Pachmarhi, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Udagamandalam (Ooty), and Mount Abu are popular tourist destinations.
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