Settlement geography is a branche of geography

Geography

Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...

 that investigates the earth's surface's part settled by humans.

Classification

Traditionally, it belongs to human geography

Human geography

Human geography is one of the two major sub-fields of the discipline of geography. Human geography is the study of the world, its people, communities, and cultures. Human geography differs from physical geography mainly in that it has a greater focus on studying human activities and is more...

 and is divided into urban geography

Urban geography

Urban geography is the study of areas which have a high concentration of buildings and infrastructure. These are areas where the majority of economic activities are in the secondary sector and tertiary sectors...

 and the geography of rural settlement

Rural settlement

The definition of a rural settlement depends on the country. In some countries, a rural settlement is any settlement in the areas defined as rural by a governmental office, e.g., by the national census bureau. This may include even rural towns...

s. Apart from India, the term is actually rarely used in English-speaking geography. One of the last English books on settlement geography was published by Cambridge University Press

Cambridge University Press

Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...

 in the 90s

90s

-Significant people:* Titus Flavius Domitianus, Roman Emperor * Nerva, Roman Emperor...

. However, it is a traditional and actual branche in many other countries (e.g. German Siedlungsgeographie, French Geographie de l'habitat, Italian Geografia insediativa, Polish Geografia osadnictwa).

Actuality

Due to processes of urban sprawl

Urban sprawl

Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a multifaceted concept, which includes the spreading outwards of a city and its suburbs to its outskirts to low-density and auto-dependent development on rural land, high segregation of uses Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a...

—such as periurbanisation

Peri-urbanisation

Peri-urbanisation , also periurbanisation, relates to a process within the phenomenon of urban sprawl. The expression originates from the french word périurbanisation.- Origin :...

 or postsuburbanisation— the existing dichotomy

Dichotomy

A dichotomy is any splitting of a whole into exactly two non-overlapping parts, meaning it is a procedure in which a whole is divided into two parts...

 between the urban and the rural is loosing importancy—especially in industrialized countries and newly industrialized countries. Hence, an integrative geography of settlements that considers the urban and the rural settlements as a continuum

Continuum

Continuum may refer to:* Continuum , anything that goes through a gradual transition from one condition, to a different condition, without any abrupt changes-Linguistics:...

 is regaining the importance lost during the 20th century.

Definitions

Referring to Stone (1965), settlement geography is

With respect to the latter definition Jordan (1966) emphasizes, that settlement geography not exclusively investigates the distributions, but even more the structure

Structure

Structure is a fundamental, tangible or intangible notion referring to the recognition, observation, nature, and permanence of patterns and relationships of entities. This notion may itself be an object, such as a built structure, or an attribute, such as the structure of society...

s, process

Process

Process or processing typically describes the action of taking something through an established and usually routine set of procedures or steps to convert it from one form to another, such as processing paperwork to grant a mortgage loan, processing milk into cheese, or converting computer data...

es and interaction

Interaction

Interaction is a kind of action that occurs as two or more objects have an effect upon one another. The idea of a two-way effect is essential in the concept of interaction, as opposed to a one-way causal effect...

s between settlements and its environment (such as soil, geomorphology, economy or society), which produce them.