Understanding the Model of Human Settlement: A Case of Navi Mumbai

Abstract

A settlement is defined as any form of human dwelling which ranges from the smallest house to the largest city. Though settlements exist in many sizes and shapes which depends upon the distribution of people in an urban as well as rural area. It is also noteworthy that people are not randomly distributed there are lot of factors which contributes to the concentration of people in a particular neighbourhood. These factors generally include: Physical infrastructure, Social infrastructure and economic infrastructure depending upon all these factors the settlements can be further classified as Nucleated settlements, Linear settlements and Dispersed Settlements. Nucleated settlements are the ones in which the buildings are closely packed to each other. Linear Settlements are
the ones in which linear pattern is followed alongside the river, coastline, road etc. while Dispersed settlements are the ones in which buildings spread out over a large area. Factors which contributes to the formation of Nucleated settlements are as follows: Good transportation links (rail, road, river) etc. Flat lands that are easy to build on, Good schools, Hospital facilities etc. The major factor which contributes to the formation of Linear settlement is either a rail route, railway station, waterways etc. while the factors which are responsible for the formation of dispersed settlements are as follows : severe weather conditions for example extremely hot or cold temperature, bad transportation
facility, no nearby hospitals or school facilities etc. Though all the settlements which are previously defined are small scale settlements, these settlements are smaller entities of large-scale urban area. Geographers have developed different models which explains the arrangement of people in a large-scale urban settlement. In this paper we are going to understand the concentric zone model of Human Settlement which can be compared to the development of Navi Mumbai.