Geography Quiz: Races & Tribes, Settlement and Migration | 7 July, 2021

The census of India, 1991 defines urban settlements as “All places which have municipality, corporation, and cantonment board or notified town area committee and have a minimum population of 5000 persons.

Source: NCERT – XII Fundamentals of Human Geography

It is a new trend of people moving away from congested urban areas to cleaner areas outside the city in search of a better quality of living.

Important suburbs develop around major cities and everyday thousands of people commute from their homes in the suburbs to their work places in the city.

Source: NCERT – XII Fundamentals of Human Geography

Rural settlements are most closely and directly related to land. They are dominated by primary activities such as agriculture, animal husbandry, fishing etc. The settlements size is relatively small. Some factors affecting the location of rural settlements are:

• Water supply

• Land
• Upland
• Defense
• Building material

Source: NCERT – XII Fundamentals of Human Geography

Rapid urban growth is a recent phenomenon. Until recent times, few settlements reached the population size of more than a few thousand inhabitants.

• The first urban settlement to reach a population of one million was the city of London by around. A.D. 1810.
• By 1982 approximately 175 cities in the world had crossed the one million population mark.
• Presently 54 per cent of the world’s population lives in urban settlements compared to only 3 per cent in the year 1800.

Source: NCERT – XII Fundamentals of Human Geography

Urbanization means the increase in the proportion population of a country who live in urban areas.

• The most important cause of urbanization is rural-urban migration. During the late 1990s some 20 to 30 million people were leaving the countryside every year and moving into towns and cities.

• Developed countries experienced rapid urbanization during the nineteenth century.
• Developing counties experienced rapid urbanization during the second half of the twentieth century.

Source: NCERT – XII Fundamentals of Human Geography

“Megalopolis” is a Greek word meaning “great city”, was popularized by Jean Gottman (1957) and signifies ‘super- metropolitan’ region extending, as union of conurbations.

The urban landscape stretching from Boston in the north to south of Washington in U.S.A. is the best-known example of a megalopolis.

Source: NCERT – XII Fundamentals of Human Geography

A mega city or megalopolis is a general term for cities together with their suburbs with a population of more than 10 million people.

Source: NCERT – XII Fundamentals of Human Geography

New York was the first to attain the status of a mega city by 1950 with a total population of about 12.5 million.

The number of mega cities is now 31. The number of mega cities has increased in the developing countries during the last 50 years vis-à-vis the developed countries.

Source: NCERT – XII Fundamentals of Human Geography

The term conurbation was coined by Patrick Geddes in 1915 and applied to a large area of urban development that resulted from the merging of originally separate towns or cities.  

Greater London, Manchester, Chicago and Tokyo are examples. 

The industry has been under fire over its carbon emissions, which at 285 g of CO2 emitted per km travelled by a passenger far exceed all other modes of transport.  

• Road transportation follows at 158 and rail travel is at 14, according to European Environment Agency figures. 
• The International Civil Aviation Organization estimates that air transport is responsible for 2% of global CO2 emissions. 

Source: The Hindu