Settlement geography
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Settlement geography is a branch of human geography that investigates the Earth's surface's part settled by humans. According to the United Nations' Vancouver Declaration on Human Settlements (1976), "human settlements means the totality of the human community – whether city, town or village – with all the social, material, organizational, spiritual and cultural elements that sustain it."
Traditionally, it belongs to cultural geography and is divided into the geography of urban settlements (cities and towns) and rural settlements (e.g. villages and hamlets). Thereby, settlements are mostly seen as elements of the cultural landscape that developed over time. Apart from Australia, Europe and 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 in the 1990s.[1] However, it is a traditional and actual branch 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 such as counter urbanization,[2] peri-urbanization or postsuburbanisation the existing dichotomy between the urban and the rural is losing importance, especially in industrialized countries and newly industrialized countries. This point of view is already represented by many planning strategies such as unified settlement planning. Hence, an integrative geography of settlements that considers the urban and the rural settlements as a continuum[3] is regaining the importance lost during the 20th century. Further it is used in prehistoric,[4] historic[5] and present-focusing[6][7][8] geographic research.
