Human Settlement Essay

2436 Words5 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Poverty levels in less developed countries

“Human Settlement Patterns”
A human settlement can be defined as any gathering of human dwellings from several houses grouped together to large cities with millions of dwellings. Throughout history, human settlements have different shapes, geographical locations and purposes. The settlements can be classified as rural and urban settlements. Urban areas involve towns and cities, rural areas include villages and small settlements (Gilchrist & Jeffs, 2001).
Ancient people preferred to settle near rivers and near available resources in the region. Thus, researchers admit that ancient cities and modern settlements follow the same rules. The main patterns are a dispersed settlement, a linear settlement, and a nucleated settlement. A dispersed settlement means the diffusion of houses over the large geographical area. Usually, a dispersed settlement is rural by its nature and it lacks any form of grouping: houses do not have any central place around a market or a religious building. It developed in hilly areas, extensive flatlands and plains. Villages in ancient England are one of the best examples of such type of settlement patterns (Atkin & Rykwert, 2005). A linear settlement means grouping of houses along the line. Such settlements appeared along rivers or coastal lines. Today, such settlements appear near roads, railway tracks, etc. This type of settlement is found in both rural and urban areas and usually small to medium-sized settlement. The examples of this type of settlement are Hong Kong, Victoria City, South Port in England. A nucleated settlement means grouping of dwellings around one center, a nucleus. Usually, these settlements appeared near roads intersections or focal points of a certain area. Market, religious building,...

... middle of paper ...

...oblem than is poverty. At no time during the years examined has poverty been seen as one of the crucial problems facing the nation by more than 6 percent of the population. The results of these problems are high criminal activity in low income regions and increased prison population (Merrick, 2002). Lack of social support and poor welfare policies lead to poverty among low income populations. It is difficult to eliminate barriers and cultural prejudices existing in the society. In other words, cultural and social minority are destined to live in poverty working full-time. Some researchers underline that government interventions should change behavior in all of the social classes and thus brought about disruption in society. The values of the work ethic and the free market system have been forgotten, as the society has become more interested in short term benefits.

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of The Working Poor By David K. Shipler

    881 Words  | 2 Pages

    In The Working Poor: Invisible in America, David K. Shipler describes the lives of United States citizens who live within poverty. He highlights the U.S.’s disregard for its working poor, the nature of poverty, and the causes of poverty faced by low-wage earners. Shipler performs an amazing job of describing the factors that play their parts into the lives of U.S. citizens who live in poverty and are in poverty. Shipler explains the effects of tax payments and refunds, the abuse of the poor by private and public institutions, the spending habits of the working poor, the culture of the U.S., and the presence of money as a factor in the lives of the working poor. In dealing with government bureaucracy or private business, the working poor are vulnerable to the abuse of con-artists, employers, financial service providers, and public service providers.

    Read More

  • New England colonies

    589 Words  | 2 Pages

    and the settlement set up will include a meeting house, a village commons, large open lots which is very large and it contains kitchens and places where animals are kept and agricultural highland. The highlands were beautiful fields divided into segments and planting and harvesting were done together as a family.

    Read More

  • Temporary Assistance for Needy Families

    2218 Words  | 5 Pages

    Undisputedly poverty has been one of the major persistent social problems in the United States for hundreds of years. Poverty does not discriminate against Caucasians, African-Americans, Hispanics, Jews, homosexuals, heterosexuals, age, gender, or persons with disabilities. Poverty can strike any population, community, ethnic group, and family. According to the U.S Census Bureau, 43.6 million people were in poverty in 2009 which was an increase from 2008. (Insert citation for website). There are multiple causes of why a family or individual can fall into poverty, which includes but not limited to, disability, unemployment, age, and recessions, as for which we have seen through the 2008 recession and the Great Depression. Throughout this paper I will address poverty as a social problem and its causes. I will also focus on how children and family households headed by single mothers are effected by poverty, and how Temporary Assistance for Needy Families came about to help children and families in poverty.

    Read More

  • The Working Poor in America

    1400 Words  | 3 Pages

    After substantial decreases in the 1990s, poverty rates stopped their decline in 2000 and have actually started to again creep upward. The great conundrum of how one simultaneously alleviates the multiple causes of poverty has become a central obstacle to poverty reduction. Into this debate comes author David Shipler, a former New York Times Pulitzer Prize winner, with an aptly titled look at the state of poverty in America today, The Working Poor. Shipler's book is more anecdotal and descriptive than analytical and prescriptive. Yet it is a valuable portrait of poverty in America, just as Michael Harrington's landmark book, The Other America, was in 1962. While he does not offer many concrete solutions, Shipler provides readers with an intimate glimpse of the plight of the working poor, whose lives are in sharp contrast to the images of excess w...

    Read More

  • Morality and Social Welfare Programs

    1010 Words  | 3 Pages

    The morality of social welfare systems, or the morality of crafting laws to aid American citizens in poverty, is a subject that (like myriad ethical issues) is hotly debated to say the least. For example, some opponents of social welfare institutions maintain the view that such programs "increase the reward or reduce the penalties" of poverty; thereby ostensibly making an impoverished state appealing even to people who might initially have been motivated to earn a living by conventional means. In other words, welfare programs (according to opponents) encourage otherwise productive individuals to embrace laziness, for basic human needs would be met by such institutions, eliminating the need to work at all. Those opposed to social welfare plans have also been known to claim that an "unfair burden is placed upon workers who must pay for the system." When one considers the above opposing views, it would then stand to reason that proponents of social welfare programs might maintain that it is the moral responsibility of working citizens to provide assistance and funding for programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the Food Stamp program, or the like. This supposition is confirmed upon examination of the notion that, when basic human needs such as "food, housing, and medical care" are not met, one is consequently rendered unable to uphold any level of social freedom. Given the above information, one can safely deduce that modern supporters of social welfare organizations are under the impression that such programs provide the impoverished masses with the means by which to obtain the level of general well-being vital to acquiring work in the first place.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Old World Civilizations

    780 Words  | 2 Pages

    The basic structures and social constructs that outline what a civilization is made up of are a dense population group, a minimizing of hunter of hunter/gather habits in favor of farming and trading habits, political, administrative, and religious centers, as well as some form of notation, usually seen in writing or a number system (Smiley 2015). In addition, city-states and territorial-states are civilizations with some key differences. City-states encompass a large variety of social stratification from political

    Read More

  • Sexism In The Hull House

    1070 Words  | 3 Pages

    By 1910 there were more than 400 Settlement houses. Immigrants Americanization has proven to through the many different programs and settlements (Daniels 419). Settlement houses today have changed their names, most are called community centers, community houses, or neighborhoods. They are still embedded closely into their communities and communicating healthy living (Settlement House Movement). Back in the early 20th century most settlement houses were scattered in northern and mid-western areas. This movement rapidly expanded with the growing immigrant population. With the immigrant population growing so vast, “settlement leaders sought to overcome the centrifugal forces of urban disintegration to restore order to a

    Read More

  • Paleolithic Age Essay

    1152 Words  | 3 Pages

    Located in Turkey and discovered in 1961 by a team of British archaeologists, is the site of one of the world’s first farming communities. Çatal Hüyük means “forked mound” in Turkish, which was how their settlement looked. Based on specialized historians, the settlement of Çatal Hüyük, was created around 7,500 BCE. The civilization once housed about 5,000 people. How could so many people live close together at a time when most people still lived as hunters and gatherers? The answer is agriculture. Agriculture provided a way for people to live in large groups without the need to travel great distances to gather food. To use agriculture, people first had to domesticate plants and animals. To domesticate means to train something to be useful to people. And the people at Çatal Hüyük learned to plant seeds and care for edible, or safe to be eaten, plants like wheat, barley, and peas. They also learned to domesticate animals such as wild goats, cattle, and sheep. Furthermore, settlements began due to agriculture and domestication. Houses were built of brick and were arranged side-by-side like a honeycomb to defend the city from attack. There were no streets in Çatal Hüyük and no doors on the houses. People entered their homes from the roof, by climbing down ladders. All of homes in Çatal Hüyük were the same size and shape. Near the ladder, there was a fireplace and an oven for heating and cooking. Çatal Hüyük was the first settlement in the world that developed

    Read More

  • The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler

    741 Words  | 2 Pages

    In The Working Poor: Invisible in America, David K. Shipler tells the story of a handful of people he has interviewed and followed through their struggles with poverty over the course of six years. David Shipler is an accomplished writer and consultant on social issues. His knowledge, experience, and extensive field work is authoritative and trustworthy. Shipler describes a vicious cycle of low paying jobs, health issues, abuse, addiction, and other factors that all combine to create a mountain of adversity that is virtually impossible to overcome. The American dream and promise of prosperity through hard work fails to deliver to the 35 million people in America who make up the working poor. Since there is neither one problem nor one solution to poverty, Shipler connects all of the issues together to show how they escalate each other. Poor children are abused, drugs and gangs run rampant in the poor neighborhoods, low wage dead end jobs, immigrants are exploited, high interest loans and credit cards entice people in times of crisis and unhealthy diets and lack of health care cause a multitude of problems. The only way that we can begin to see positive change is through a community approach joining the poverty stricken individuals, community, businesses, and government to band together to make a commitment to improve all areas that need help.

    Read More

  • Mountain Ranges of North America: The Rocky Mountains

    1855 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...sted of tents and then tents became ranches and farms. Forts and train stations eventually grew into towns and some towns were then able to grow into cities.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Land Use Graphs

    863 Words  | 2 Pages

    There were an abundance of spatial differences in terms of ethnic, convivial and occupational status, while there were low occurrences of the functional differences in land use patterns. The concentric model postulated a spatial disunion of place of work and place of residence, which was not generalized until the twentieth century.

    Read More

  • Poverty, Education, and Overdevelopment

    645 Words  | 2 Pages

    Critically one of the larger factors of this topic where the problems begin is in poverty. Citizens of the United States often argue that lack of social reform has significant effects throughout all communities and their poverty levels in America. This may be true to a certain degree, but a largely missed fact is that exponential growth has occurred vastly in the past hundred years shown through histories’ short industrialization of the US; population size strongly correlates to the increase cost of living and the poverty threshold. Social form favors the increase of manufacturing which has dominated not only our capitalist market but many foreign markets as well; while compared to service occupations which have made little advancement compared to production output and technology. Those key components affect largely the amount of jobs available and knowledge required to compete in a competitive job market, yet allow employers to operate at minimal expense level. This disparity of finite jobs creates the separation of classes respectively relating people’s ability t...

    Read More

  • The Negative Effects Of Poverty

    1313 Words  | 3 Pages

    Poverty is an undeniable problem in America. In 2014, 14.8 percent of the United States was in poverty (“Hunger and Poverty Fact Sheet”). There are more people in the United States than it seems that do not have their basic necessities. In an

    Read More

  • Social Issues and Poverty

    990 Words  | 2 Pages

    Social issues are problems in the society today that are described as wrong, widespread and changeable. A category of conditions that people believe need to be changed. Poverty is a serious social issue in the society today. According to Peilin (2012), poverty brings hardships to families and individuals as well as political thereby negatively affecting the social stability and social development and posing a severe threat to human security (p. 243). This paper focuses on poverty as a social issue in today’s society. First, it gives a succinct introduction of the social issue, and then describes how it fits into the field of sociology. It also evaluates the sociological theories and terminology that relate to the social issue. The section that follows evaluates what is known and unknown about the particular social issue. This is followed by a discussion regarding the value of sociological research into the issue determining the available or possible practical implications of the sociological inquiry. The information presented here is strongly supported by the concepts and theories derived from reliable sources.

    Read More

  • Informal Settlement Essay

    3079 Words  | 7 Pages

    Many synonyms have been used in literature to refer to informal settlements. These include spontaneous, irregular, unplanned, marginal and squatter settlements. Some literatures have used the terms slums and informal settlements interchangeably (UNHSP, 2003). While a clear definition for informal settlements is still difficult to find (ibid), some organisations have given descriptions of informal settlements....

    Read More

More about Human Settlement Essay

Open Document