Human Activities and
Settlement

Introduction
• Human activities are those activities which
enable people to earn their living. They vary
between areas. Also economic system are
spatially interrelated and interlinked.
• Human activities differ between places due to
spatial variation on:-
– Physical environment
– Culture
– Technological development
– Political decisions/factors
– Economic factors of demand/market.

PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT
• e.g. crops grown in areas with high rainfall are
different from those grown in areas with low
rainfall.
• Unequal distribution of mineral resource
deposit enables some regions and countries
attain an economic prosperous and
employment opportunity which is not
available in other areas.

CULTURE
• Within the bound of the environment, the
economy or production decisions may be
conditioned by cultural consideration e.g.
cultural based food preference rather than
environmental limitations may dictate the
choice of crops or livestock .e.g. in Muslim
areas pigs are not layered.
• Maize is a preferred grain in Africa, wheat in
North America, Australia, Argentina and
Europe and rice in much of Asia.

LEVEL OF TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT
• Affect recognition of resources and ability to
exploit.
POLITICAL DECISIONS
• May encourage or discourage through
subsidies, protective tariffs or production
restrictions- patterns of economic activity.
ECONOMIC FACTORS OF DEMAND/MARKET
• Whether production is based on free market,
government interaction (controlled economy)
and consumption requirements of a single
family.

TYPES OF HUMAN ACTIVITIES
• Human activities may be categorized by
viewing continuum and increasing complexity
of product or service and increasing distance
from natural environment.

Primary activities
• Are those that harvest or extract something
directly from the earth. They are at the
beginning of the production cycle where
humans are in closely contact with the
resources and potentialities of the
environment. Such primary activities involve
basic food stuff and raw material production.
Hunting and gathering, grazing, agriculture,
fishing, forestry and mining and quarrying are
examples.

Secondary activities
• Are those that add value to materials by
changing their form or combining them into
more useful and therefore more valuable
commodities.
• They may range from simple handicraft
production of pottery or wooden ware to
delicate assembly of electronic goods or
vehicles computer smelting, steel making,
metal working, automobile production, textile
and chemical manufacturing and processing
industries are also included.

• The production of energy of the power
company and the construction
Tertiary activities
• Consist of those business and labour
specializations that provide services to the
primary and secondary sectors and goods and
services to the general community and to the
individual.
• They include professional, clerical and
personal services. Tertiary activities constitute
the vital link between producer and consumer.

• For example are retail and wholesale trade,
personal and professional services.
• Note: In economically advanced societies
there are Quaternary and Quinary activities.
Quaternary activities
• The term quaternary is applied to the
economic activities which are composed
entirely of services rendered by white collar
professionals working in education,
government, management, information
processing and research.

• For example are retail and wholesale trade,
personal and professional services.
• Note: In economically advanced societies
there are Quaternary and Quaternary
activities.
Quaternary activities
• The term quaternary is applied to the
economic activities which are composed
entirely of services rendered by white collar
professionals working in education,
government, management, information
processing and research.

• Are activities in which individuals and the
entire organizations are engaged in processing
and discrimination of information
• The term Quaternary activities: applies to
activities of high level decision making roles in
all types of large organizations, public or
private
Note:
To all categories transportation and
communication services cut across the general
activity unite them and make possible the
spatial interactions that all human enterprise
requires.

DISCUSSION
Why human activities
differ between places?

SPATIAL INTERACTION AND
ORGANIZATION
• Spatial Diffusion Theories
• Spatial diffusion is essentially important in
geography to explain the ways in which
phenomena, such as technological
innovations, cultural trends, or even outbreak
of disease, travel over time. In geography,
there are main two spatial diffusion processes,
namely: Expansion diffusion and Relocation
diffusion.

• Expansion diffusion, the thing or a process
being spread remains in the area of origin as
well as spreads to surrounding areas. This
takes two forms; contagious and hierarchical
diffusion.
a. Contagious diffusion, a phenomenon is
transmitted over a distance simply because
people who carry it are close to each other.
b. Hierarchical diffusion involves the
transmission of phenomenon from one
place to another because the level of
interaction between places overcomes the
actual distance between them.

GRAVITY MODEL
• It was first described in the 1850s and is based
on Issac Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation.
• According to Newton, the degree to which
objects are attracted to each other by gravity is
a result of the product of their respective
masses divided by the square of their distance
apart.

• The gravity model in geography, substitutes
population for gravity. Thus, the interaction
between two places is equal to the product of
the palces; populations divided by the square
of their distance apart.
Iab = PaPb
(Dab)2

Where,
• Iab = Interaction between places
• Pa = the population of place a
• Pb = the population of place b
• Dab = the distance between place a and b

Its Implication
• Large cities may still have extensive and
important interactions despite being separated
by distances. This is because, their extremely
large population, when multiplied together in
the denominator; are large enough to
overcome the square of the distance between
them, represented in the denominator.
• Large cities have a greater “gravitational pull”
for individual people than small cities. Because,
large cities provide a diversity of opportunities
for employment, education, products and
services.

• This reflects the law of retail gravitation which
formally described in 1931.
• It states that people will be drawn to large cities
to conduct their business since large cities have
a wide influence on the areas that surround
them.
• The outer edge of a city’s sphere of influence is
called the breaking point.