It is not easy to develop a definition of urban space because such a definition must consider the social parameters of its constituent parts: urban and space. A vital concept in this quest is Functional Urban Areas .
The difficulty of defining urban space is enhanced if one considers that urban space is an artifact of a social process that describes the manner in which city grow and society become more complex. A synergistic perspective of space situates the location of ‘‘urban’’ as an outcome of social and institutional forces associated with urbanization. In contrast, a structural perspective of space identifies ‘‘urban’’ as the product of social structures and relationships that typify urbanization and what are urban systems.
Functional urban areas (FUA) comprise cities and their commuting zones. Therefore, functional urban areas consist of a densely inhabited city and a less densely populated commuting zone whose labor market is highly integrated with the city.
Groups of neighbouring cities can be defined as one city (so-called a greater city). Commuting zones are defined as local administrative units from which at least 15% of the employed population commutes to the city, while enclaves are included in and exclaves are excluded from a commuting zone. If a local administrative unit has a commuting flow of more than 15% of its employed residents to more than one city, then such unit is assigned as a part of the commuting zone of that city for which it has the largest commuting flow. Functional urban areas may extend beyond the boundaries of first-level administrative units as well as the state boundary.
Functional urban areas are being updated after obtaining new data on commuting shares or on population density in the 1 km2 grid, as well as in the case of changes in LAU boundaries.
The typology of functional urban areas dates back to the 1990s, when data for European cities with at least 100 000 inhabitants were collected through the Urban Audit and the Large City Audit projects. Their ultimate goal was to contribute towards improvements in the quality of urban life by: supporting the exchange of information and experiences between EU cities, helping to identify best practices, facilitating benchmarking across the EU, providing information on the dynamics within the cities and between cities and their surrounding areas. Within the Urban Audit, its units were previously referred to as follows: cities – ‘core cities’ (cities within their administrative boundaries), greater cities – ‘kernels’, and functional urban areas – ‘larger urban zones’ (LUZ).
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A settlement, locality, or populated place is a community in which people live. A settlement can range in size from a small number of dwellings grouped together to the largest of cities with surrounding urbanized areas. Settlements may include hamlets, villages, towns, and cities.
Settlement refers to the cluster of houses over space which manifests the socioeconomic conditions and the environmental constraints. Thus, a settlement has both physical and social structures.
The settlement is an expansion of the socio-historic, cultural, and religious perception of a man in a given geographic environment.
The villages which had non-agricultural surplus developed into ‘Mandis’ and the transportation routes connected the Mandis and hence developed the urban settlements.
Function (Primary, Secondary, Tertiary): Rural areas basically have the majority of its population involved in primary functions whereas in urban areas people have secondary (manufacturing) and tertiary functions (services) as their major occupations.e are five criteria to differentiate between rural settlement and urban settlement
Morphology (the physical structure): The urban structures are marked by tall buildings, wide roads, administrative and recreation centres in contrast to rural settlements which are usually agrarian landscapes.
Demography (high or low population density): Urban areas are marked by high population density and compact settlements in comparison to rural areas where population density is relatively low and settlements are scattered.
Cultural traits: The urban areas are marked by class stratification in contrast to the rural areas where the cast and religious stratification is more prominent.
Infrastructure:
Economic infrastructure: Economic infrastructure includes transportation, communication, etc. which is more developed in urban areas than rural areas.
Social infrastructure: It includes health, education recreation, etc. where urban areas score over rural areas.
Census of India gives definitions of rural and urban areasbased on three criteria:
Rural Settlement
Population is less than 5000
Population density is less than 400 persons/Sq. km.
More than 75 % of people are engaged in Agricultural and associated primary activities
Run by Gram-Panchayats.
Urban Settlement
Population is greater than 5000
Population density is greater than 400 persons/Sq. km. or 1000 persons/Sq. Mile
More than 75 % of people are engaged in Non-Agricultural activities
Run by Municipality, Cantonment Board, Corporation, etc.
Rural settlement
Any settlements in which majority of the people are engaged in primary activities such as agriculture, forestry, mining, or fishing is known as a rural settlement.
Rural settlements are the clusters ofunorganized, amorphous, closely knitted houses with poor ventilation and sewage/drainage pattern and lanes meandering (meandering roads/not properly planned) and abruptly ending into houses.
It includes not only the village but also agricultural fields and areas of forestry and livestock raising which are functionally integrated with the village.
They have strong currents of social bonding. Rural settlement signifies great centripetal force due to strong bonding between the people.
Rural settlement constitutes both physical morphology and social morphology.
Rural settlement comprises of the aggregate of the village, agricultural land, forestry, and livestock area.
Rural settlement manifests socio-economic aspiration, their adaptability, the historical progression of a living civilization, and economic functionality.
Hamlet
A hamlet is a small human settlement.
In British geography, a hamlet is considered smaller than a village and distinctly without a church.
Officially, a hamlet differs from a village in having no commercial premises, but has residences and may have community buildings such as churches and public halls.
Village
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town, with a population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand.
In the past, villages were a usual form of community for societies that practice subsistence agriculture, and also for some non-agricultural societies.
According to the 2011 census of India, 68.84% of Indians (around 833.1 million people) live in 640,867 different villages.
Rurban
Rural + Urban
Transitional Phase in between Rural and Urban settlements
Run by Gram Panchayets
Population is more than 5000 but less than 10,000.
Town
A town is a medium-sized human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages but smaller than cities, though the criteria which constitute them vary considerably in different parts of the world.
Large town – 20,000 to 1 lakh people
Town – 5,000 to 20,000 people.
Census towns are defined as places that satisfy the following criteria:
Minimum population of 5,000
At least 75% of male working population engaged in non-agricultural pursuits
Density of population at least 400/km2. (1,000 per sq. mile).
CIty
A city is a large human settlement. Cities generally have extensive systems for housing, transportation, sanitation, utilities, land use, and communication. Their density facilitates interaction between people, government organizations, and businesses, sometimes benefiting different parties in the process.
City – 1 lakh to 3 lakh Population
Large City – 3 lakh to 1 million population.
Metropolis
A metropolis is a large city or conurbation which is a significant economic, political, and cultural center for a country or region, and an important hub for regional or international connections, commerce, and communications. The term is Ancient Greek and means the “mother city” of a colony (in the ancient sense), that is, the city that sent out settlers.
Minimum Population – 1 to 3 million.
Conurbation – 3 to 10 million people.
Megalopolis
The term was used by Patrick Geddes in his 1915 book Cities in Evolution.Jean Gottmann popularised this term in 1961.
A megalopolis (sometimes called a megapolis; also megaregion, or supercity) is typically defined as a chain of roughly adjacent metropolitan areas, which may be somewhat separated or may merge into a continuous urban region.
Megalopolis is derived from Greek:(mégas) meaning ‘great’ and (pólis) meaning ‘city’, therefore literally a ‘great city’. This term is closer in meaning to megacity.
A megalopolis, also known as a mega-region, is a clustered network of cities.
Gottmann defined its population as 25 million.
Doxiadis defined a small megalopolis a similar cluster with a population of about 10 million.
A primate city (Latin: “prime, first rank”) is the largest city in its country or region, disproportionately larger than any others in the urban hierarchy.
First proposed by the geographer Mark Jefferson in 1939.
He defines a primate city as being “at least twice as large as the next largest city and more than twice as significant.”
Among the best known examples of primate cities are London and Paris.
Other major primate cities include Athens, Baghdad, Bangkok, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Dublin, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Lima, Mexico City, Seoul, Tehran, and Vienna.
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