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A human settlement is a permanent community where people live, from a small number of dwellings grouped together to the largest of cities with surrounding urbanized areas.

A settlement hierarchy is a way of sorting settlements into a hierarchy based upon their population. An isolated building being at the lowest point, and a conurbation being at the top with the highest amount of people. The higher up the pyramid that you go the more people in that type of settlement, typically with a larger geographic area, and a higher availability of services.

• Conurbation/metropolitan area – a supercity consisting of multiple cities and towns. The population would generally be several million.
• Large City – a city with a large population and many services. The population would be >1 million people.
• City – a city would have abundant services, but not as many as a large city. The population would be over 100,000 people.
• Large town – a large town would have a population of 20,000 up to 100,000
• Town – a town would have a population of 1,000 up to 20,000
• Village – a village would not have many services, possibly only a small corner shop or post office. The population would likely be in the hundreds.
• Hamlet – a hamlet has a tiny population (>100) and very few(if any) services, and few buildings.
• Isolated dwelling – an isolated dwelling would only have 1 or 2 buildings or families in it. It would have negligible services, if any.

Settlement hierarchy can also depend on the sphere of influence. This is how far people will travel to use the services in the settlement, if people travel further the town becomes more important and ranks higher in settlement hierarchy.

However using size of a settlement can be misleading in some cases as not all population boundaries fit. A better way to state hierarchy would be simply by the services that they provide with each settlement further up offering more and better.

See also: Ekistic units

• Developed Environments
• Colonization
• Israeli settlement
• Transmigration program
• Resettlement
• Ekistics
• Category:Settlements

• "BBC - GCSE Bitesize | Settlement hierarchy"