Settlements and landscapes

Scope Note: Bio/Hist: The Settlements and Landscapes hierarchy contains descriptors for the largest features of the built environment, whether relatively concentrated (e.g., "retirement communities") or extensive (e.g., "capital cities"). Settlements are defined as all places or areas, however large, occupied or modified by human populations and with enough societal functions to be relatively self-sufficient. Also included in this hierarchy are descriptors for major types of natural landscape and cultural landscape and their components that provide the largest environmental context for built works. By placing natural landscapes in this hierarchy, the AAT has chosen not to emphasize a distinction between the natural environment and the built environment. Maintaining such a distinction is often frustrated because (a) there is continuity between the two, (b) much of the natural environment has been subject to human intervention and has the qualifies of a cultural artifact, and (c) much of the built environment, at a wide range of scale, functions as an ecological system.Relation to Other Hierarchies: Administrative bodies (e.g.g., "nations", "provinces") are located in the Organizations hierarchy. Adjectival attributes of some settlements (e.g., "radial plan") are found in the Associated Concepts hierarchy. Descriptors referring to individual plants and trees are found in the Materials hierarchy (e.g.g., "bamboo", "pine"), while descriptors for general vegetation (e.g., "jungles", "shrubs") are found here. Descriptors for infrastructural systems, networks of buildings, other structures, and equipment that constitute physically ordered entities within settlements and landscapes (e.g., "bus transit systems") are located in the Object Groupings and Systems hierarchy.

Found in 6 Collections and/or Records: