Chapter 2 — Human Settlements

A human settlement is a cluster of dwellings of any type or size where human beings live. It inherently involves grouping of people and apportioning of territory as their resource base.

The four types are: clustered (agglomerated or nucleated), semi-clustered (fragmented), hamleted, and dispersed (isolated).

Three sets of factors: physical features (terrain, altitude, climate, water availability), cultural and ethnic factors (social structure, caste, religion), and security factors (defence against thefts and robberies).

Clustered settlements are found in fertile alluvial plains and the northeastern states. In Bundelkhand they form due to security or defence reasons, and in Rajasthan due to water scarcity necessitating compact settlement for maximum utilisation of available water resources.

Hamleted settlements are fragmented into several physically separated units bearing a common name. These units are locally called panna, para, palli, nagla, dhani in various parts of the country. Such villages are more frequently found in the middle and lower Ganga plain, Chhattisgarh, and lower valleys of the Himalayas.

All places which have a municipality, corporation, cantonment board, or notified town area committee and have a minimum population of 5,000 persons, at least 75% of male workers engaged in non-agricultural pursuits, and a density of population of at least 400 persons per square kilometre.

Into three categories — ancient towns (spanning over 2,000 years, e.g., Varanasi, Prayagraj, Patna, Madurai), medieval towns (about 100 towns that developed as headquarters of principalities, e.g., Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Agra), and modern towns (British-developed ports and administrative centres, e.g., Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, and post-independence towns like Chandigarh and Jamshedpur).

31.16% of the total population lived in urban areas in 2011. Urban population increased eleven-fold during the 20th century, though the growth rate of urbanisation slowed down during the last two decades.

The British consolidated their hold around three principal nodes — Mumbai (Bombay), Chennai (Madras), and Kolkata (Calcutta) — and built them in the British style.

Administrative towns (e.g., Chandigarh, New Delhi, Bhopal), industrial towns (e.g., Mumbai, Jamshedpur, Bhilai), transport/port towns (e.g., Kandla, Vishakhapatnam), commercial towns (e.g., Kolkata), mining towns (e.g., Raniganj, Jharia, Digboi), garrison/cantonment towns (e.g., Ambala, Jalandhar), educational towns (e.g., Roorkee, Aligarh, Pilani), religious/cultural towns (e.g., Varanasi, Amritsar, Madurai), and tourist towns (e.g., Shimla, Nainital, Mussoorie).

Semi-clustered settlements are widespread in the Gujarat plain and some parts of Rajasthan. They result from fragmentation of a large compact village, where the land-owning and dominant community occupies the central part while people of lower strata and menial workers settle on the outer flanks.

In many areas of Meghalaya, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Kerala, often caused by extremely fragmented nature of terrain and the land resource base of habitable areas.

Administrative headquarters: Chandigarh, Bhubaneswar, Gandhinagar, Dispur. Industrial centres: Durgapur, Bhilai, Sindri, Barauni. Satellite towns around Delhi: Ghaziabad, Rohtak, Gurugram.

To promote cities that provide core infrastructure, a clean and sustainable environment, and decent quality of life. It applies smart solutions to infrastructure and services to make areas less vulnerable to disasters, use fewer resources, and provide cheaper services, focusing on compact replicable models.

Yes — the NCERT PDF for Human Settlements is available free with no sign-up on cbseprepmaster.com.