Settlement Settlement GeographyGeography

LARGEST CITIES (BY CITY POPULATION)

1)Toyko2)New York3)Mexico City4)Seoul5)Sao Paulo6)Osaka7)Jakarta8)Delhi9)Los Angeles10) Cairo15) Shanghai18) Paris20) London54) Johannesburg72) Barcelona99) Athens350) Brazaville981) Bloemfontein

NEW YORK, NEW YORK: INTERESTING FACTS:

Broadway, originating from Lower Manhattan at Bowling Green and ending in Albany, is one of the world's longest streets at 150 mi (241km). The official name of this street is Highway 9.

Manhattan's downtown southern tip area is predominantly landfill. The actual "natural" Manhattan makes up only 75% of the total area in the downtown region.

New York City has 722 miles of subway track.

City population: 7,420,166 (1998)

Miles of streets 6,400+

Miles of subway track 722+

Acres of parks 26,138

Number of airport passengers 77.5 million

Number of licensed taxis 12,387

  Number of buses: 3,867

Number of restaurants 19,400+ ...

NYC Area 301 square miles 

Number of movie theatres 375+

Number of art galleries 600+

Subway cars: 5,799

Subway stations: 468

Average weekday subway riders 4.5 million

Miles of subway track: 656

Macy's, the world's largest store, covers 2.1 million square feet of space and stocks over 500,000 different items.

The Statue of Liberty's index finger is eight feet long.

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is so long (4,260 feet) that the towers are a few inches out of parallel to accommodate the curvature of the earth.

New York City has 578 miles of waterfront.

John Hertz, who founded the Yellow Cab Company in 1907, chose yellow because he read a survey by the University of Chicago that found yellow was the easiest color to spot.

The Dutch supposedly bought Manhattan from its Native American inhabitants for about $24 worth of trinkets.

Central Park in the middle of Manhattan covers a larger area than the principality of Monaco.

Number of bird species in Central Park is 215.

From 1892 to 1924, 12 million immigrants entered the United States through Ellis Island.

As late as the 1840s, thousands of pigs roamed Wall Street to consume garbage - an early sanitation system

Under the Dutch, Wall Street - where there really was a wall - was the city limit.

The vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank on Maiden Lane store more than one-quarter of the world's gold bullion.

The Brooklyn Bridge was the first bridge to be lit using electricity.

There are over 80 TV and movie productions taking place in New York every day.

26 000 000 kilograms of waste are produced in NYC per day.

New York utilizes over a billions gallons of water per day.Over a million people are malnourished in New York.

There are close to a million homeless people in and around NYC.

URBANISATION IN SOUTH AFRICAThe rate of urbanisation in South Africa has been very rapid since the 1950s. Today 57% (or 21 million) of all South Africans live in towns and cities, an average level of urbanisation for a Third World country. By the year 2010, 73% of our population will be urban - 43,7 million people! Rapid urbanisation brings with it many problems as it places huge demands on land, water, housing, transport and employment.

WHAT ARE SETTLEMENTS

Structures

Services

PeopleInfrastructure

Economic Activities

NUCLEATEDDISPERSED

Flat

Communal living

Subsistence farming

Communal land-ownership

Fertile soil

Ample water

SITESITUATION

Building materials

Wet point

Dry point

Resources

Fertile soil

Ford site

Safety

Infrastructure

Transport routes

Proximity to markets

Climate

ISOLATED FARMSTEADHAMLETVILLAGETOWN CITYMETROPOLISCONURBATIONMEGALOPOLIS