The structure of settlement : needed adaptations to change

by man into landscape. The «normal» or «traditio¬ nal» pattern of setüement is of a hierarchical, roughly pyramidal strueture, fitting the prevalent employment strueture of the population. Until the Industrial Revolution the vast majority of the labour force had to be employed in the agricultural sector in order to provide an adequate food supply. In most populations the agricultural sector amountedto 80 per cent of the labour force or even more1. Con¬ sequently, for the vast majority of time of human history and for practically all countries, villages based on agricultural activity were the prevalent type of settlement. In addition to the villages which formed the essential subjeet matter of the settlement matrix there was a rather insignificant number of towns. These formed the upper segments of the pyramid of Settlements, a majority being service towns for the agricultural villages, the rest serving

In general the places of settlement and the routes or roads are the most persistent elements introduced by man into landscape.The «normal» or «traditio¬ nal» pattern of setüement is of a hierarchical, roughly pyramidal strueture, fitting the prevalent employment strueture of the population.Until the Industrial Revolution the vast majority of the labour force had to be employed in the agricultural sector in order to provide an adequate food supply.In most populations the agricultural sector amountedto 80 per cent of the labour force or even more1.Con¬ sequently, for the vast majority of time of human history and for practically all countries, villages based on agricultural activity were the prevalent type of settlement.In addition to the villages which formed the essential subjeet matter of the settlement matrix there was a rather insignificant number of towns.These formed the upper segments of the pyramid of Settlements, a majority being service towns for the agricultural villages, the rest serving as administrative centers and for a variety of purposes.

Changes in Employment Strueture
The Industrial Revolution brought about a basic change in employment strueture which gradually gained considerable impetus.This change, however, had but little influence on the existing settlement fabric.Due to its inherent quality of persistence there were only minor changes in the settlement strueture.These resulted essentially in the transfor¬ mation (or sometimes reclassification) of some of the largest villages into towns, and in the establishment of a number of new towns.But irrespective of the significant decrease of agriculture as the preva¬ lent element in employment strueture there oecurred but an insignificant shift in the numbers of vil¬ lages and towns respectively.The present Technological Revolution, in füll swing since World War II, did have a revolutionary effect on agriculture too through mechanization, irrigation and agricultural genetics.As a result the percentage of the labour force employed in agriculture is de- crasing steeply.It did drop in a majority of coun¬ tries below 40 per cent, is approaching 10 per cent in countries which made particular progress in agro- technology, and is even decreasing below 10 per cent.
In short, an increasing majority of the population, amounting to or even exceeding 90 per cent in some nations, forms today the non-agricultural labour force: it has, therefore, no rational relation to villa¬ ges or the rural sector of the settlement fabric.The shift from a prevalently agricultural labour force distinetive of human population, and therefore settlement, since prehistory until the nineteenth Century, to a prevalently non-agricultural employ¬ ment strueture increasingly characteristic since the last Century has brought about a tremendous acce- leration in urbanisation, one of the distinet features of the twentieth Century.This process has been ag- gravated by another result of the Technological Revolution: the unprecedented increase in numbers of population, being another distinetive feature of the twentieth Century.
Three Stages of Settlement Strueture These developments permit to identify three stages in the strueture of settlement.
Stage Abased on agriculture as the most important branch of employment.Accordingly, the basic ele¬ ment of settlement are villages which form the overriding factor in the settlement fabric.The top of the settlement pyramid is formed by urban strata, some of the towns growing to considerable size.
Stage Ba transitional stage.Changes in employ¬ ment strueture and in technology, including in trans- portation technology, bring about the partial func¬ tional obsolescence of some of the agricultural vil¬ lages and consequently of some of the towns serving the rural sector.The result is rural to urban migration, the growth of many towns and the regression and deterioration of others.The same applies, often to an even higher degree, to villages, a certain percentage of which suffers badly from rural depopulation.
Stage Cis essentially non-agricultural in its emp¬ loyment strueture.The town, therefore, is its basic dement of settlement.The number of towns is growing, and so is the size of the individual town.Some villages are abandoned, especially those marginal for location or production potential.Others undergo transformation, partial or in füll, by introducing industry2 or turning into dormitory Settlements for towns within commuting distance.Stage C experiences increasing migration into cities and increasing growth of the large cities amongst them3.Many of these are but ill fitted to aecomodate the population influx; appalling slums are the result.As a complementary feature, stage C ex¬ periences rural depopulation including regression of some towns in rural areas.and opportunities of the large metropolitan Centers which is a powerful motive for migration to the major cities.However, the vast majority of these migrants join the lower, and lowest, ranks of the metropolitan labour force, and have to live in the rapidly growing shanty towns at their outskirts, where housing conditions are hardly better than in the poor rural areas whence they came, and often worse.The final words of the sentence by Mark Jefferson quoted above dealing with the attraction of primate cities «... and there fame and fortune are found» is true indeed, but applies only to an infinitesimal portion of the people who migrate there.The volume of migration results from the size of the gap of economic potentials and from an insufficient degree of communication which passes to the people in the rural areas only the Information about the advantages of the big cities but suppresses their disadvantages.

Two Dichotomies of Settlement Pattern
The result of all this is a double dichotomy of the settlement pattern.The first applies to nearly all countries and is the increasing polarity between rural and urban settlement.The second applies mainly to those countries in which urbanization has been greatly accelerated in recent decades, especial¬ ly the so-called developing countries.This leads to an additional dichotomy within the urban sector, resulting in a small number of rapidly growing major cities, often overgrown in size, in distinet contrast to the small and medium-size towns which show but moderate development and not infrequently regression.
This second type of dichotomy has much to do with the underlying reasons stated by Mark Jefferson in presenting his Law of the Primate City: «Tither flows an unending stream of the young and the ambitious in search of fame and fortune4».This type of one, or a few, excessively large cities is found in particular in countries which underwent their main national development in the present Century only.
Metropolitan populations of close to 8 million for Säo Paulo, c. 7 million for Rio de Janeiro, 8 million for Buenos Aires, c. 2 million for Caracas, over 2 million for each of Santiago, Lima and Bogota, as well as over 5 million for Cairo, close to 3 million for Alexandria, or 1,5 million for Casablanca, and over 1 million for Algiers and Kinshasa lack the understrueture of medium-size cities to be found in countries which started earlier on the path of mo¬ dern development, such as the majority of European countries, the USA, USSR, and others.In the deve¬ loping countries it is the glaring gap between hardly developing rural areas and the economic diversity

Aims for Planning
Stage C which is the stage in which many countries find themselves today presents a distinet case of maladaptation.It is prevalently urban in its econo- my but still retains most of its rural settlement strue¬ ture, as heritage of its agricultural past.This maladjustment and the prospect of its further deterio¬ ration pose a number of objeetives to national and regional planning.The addition of new towns to the settlement fabric in order to bring it into better balance with the pre¬ sent and future employment strueture of the popu¬ lation.These towns should be of sufficient size to provide an adequate ränge of Services.
The planned transformation of an increasing num¬ ber of agricultural villages into industrial Settle¬ ments.This can have the double advantage of revitalizing the economic basis of many a village and arrest its regression, and of dispersing those branches of industry for which a big-city location is not mandatory.
Tackling the problem of small towns suffering seve- rely from regression.They can no longer maintain adequate Services for their diminishing population.They require the attention of planners before they deteriorate to semi ghost towns5.If their deterio¬ ration can not be reversed by infusion of new functions it might be advisable to bring about their plan¬ ned abandonment, to prevent the social damage inherent in a severely underpopulated town.
The limitation by administrative and economic re- straints of additional excessively large cities, in order to avoid their two most serious disadvantages.
(1) A severe waste of manpower, the result of the overload of traffic in a large metropolitan city: this leads to the waste of 20 to 30 per cent of work time in the journey to work.(2) Environmental and social deterioration including the various forms of pollution of the physical environment and the social deterioration characteristic for an excessively large city.
The stronger the planning authority, the better are its chances to achieve these goals.A pertinent State¬ ment to this effect has been made by Soviet plan¬ ners, who foresee by the end of the Century the majority of the population living in middle-size and large cities, and who have it declared their policy to limit the growth of the superlarge cities and at the same time to avoid the formation of ex¬ cessively small urban Settlements6.Notes 4 Jefferson Mark: The Law of the Primate City, Geographical Review, 29, 1939, pp.226-232, ref.   p. 226. 5 The case of the former railroad towns in the Midwest of the USA might be mentioned here, though it is by no means the only one.For reasons of the technology of railroad construction these towns were established at distances of six miles from one the other.After completion of the railroad many a town did not succeed in establishing a sound eco¬ nomic base and some of them are in a sorry State of regression today.
1 The UN Demographic Yearbook for 1948 and the Yearbook of Labour Statistics for 1947-48 give the following percentages of the national labour force employed in agriculture for as late as the de¬ cade preceding World War II: Cf. George P.: : Introduction ä l'ei de la population du monde.Paris, 1951, p. 104.   2 Switzerland presents some prime illustrations for this, developing its tradition of village industries, a major item of which has been the watch industry for many a generation.Today a variety of industries are located in Swiss village communities, including some industries of considerable size.At a smaller scale, the most advanced type of agricultural village in Israel, the kibbuts, has introduced industrial plants to a considerable degree.