Rural Settlements Key Terms

Question 1

Rural

Answer 1

Means belonging to or relating to life in the countryside, in contrast to an urban lifestyle

Question 2

Rural landscape

Answer 2

Mental or visual picture of countryside scenery - difficult to define as rural areas are constantly changing and vary from place to place

Question 3

Rural population

Answer 3

Those people living in the countryside in farms, isolated houses, hamlets and villages (sometimes small market towns are classified as rural)

Question 4

Gentrification

Answer 4

In-migration of people from higher socioeconomic groups into areas where the existing population is generally of lower socioeconomic group compared to newcomers

Question 5

Green belts

Answer 5

Area of open land retained around a city or town which there are planning restrictions on development

Question 6

Key villages

Answer 6

Villages designated to be developed in terms of the goods and services available to the people in the villages and surrounding area

Question 7

Counterurbanisation

Answer 7

The process of population decentralisation as people move from large urban areas to smaller urban settlement and rural areas

Question 8

Metropolitan village

Answer 8

A villager that has been transformed into a commuter settlement because of its proximity to a large urban area

Question 9

Rural depopulation

Answer 9

Decrease of population of rural areas, whether by out-migration or by falling birth rates as young people move away, usually to urban areas

Question 10

Hamlet

Answer 10

Very small rural settlement that is too small to be considered a village and lacks a church and other services

Question 11

Urbanisation of poverty

Answer 11

Describes the increasing concentration of poverty in urban areas in LICs partly due to high levels of rural-urban migration