question_answer

Classify urban settlements on the basis of size, functions and services available into five categories and explain an important characteristic of each type.

Answer:

Depending on the size, functions and the service available, urban settlements are designated as town city, million city, conurbation, and megalopolis.

(i) Town: Population size in town is higher than the village. Functions such as, manufacturing, retail and wholesale trade, and professional services exist in towns.

(ii) City: A city may be regarded as a leading town. Cities are much larger than towns and have a greater number of economic functions. They tend to have transport terminals, major financial institutions and regional administrative offices.

When the population crosses the one million mark it is designated as a million city.

(iii) Million city: The cities having more than million population is known as million city. The number of these types of cities in the world have been increasing as never before.

(iv) Conurbation: The term conurbation was coined by Patrick Geddes in 1915 and applied to a large area of urban development resulted from the merging of originally separate towns or cities. Greater London, Greater Mumbai, Manchester, Chicago and Tokyo are examples.

(v) Megalopolis: This Greek word meaning "great city", was popularized by Jean Gottman (1957) and signifies ?super-metropolitan? region extending 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.