Settlements and service provision

Cambridge IGCSE Geography 0460 · Theme 1 Population and Settlement Syllabus: 2025 and 2026 Official syllabus point: 1.5

This topic is examined up to and including the November 2026 series, and it does not appear in the 2027 syllabus. The 2027, 2028 and 2029 syllabus document states in its own list of changes that "The settlement, water, and weather topics have been removed." If you are sitting Geography 0460 in 2027 or later, close this page: nothing on it is on your syllabus. If you are sitting in the June 2026 or November 2026 series, this is live content and it is worth a full 7 mark question on Paper 1, a full structured question on Paper 2 and an entire Paper 4 investigation.

Everything below is written to the 2025 and 2026 syllabus wording for point 1.5 and checked against Cambridge mark schemes from 2020 to 2024.

What this file covers, and what it does not

Syllabus point 1.5 has three content statements, and this file covers all three and nothing else:

Case Study required for 1.5: Settlement and service provision in an area.

Where the neighbouring topics live. Point 1.6 Urban settlements, which is urban land use zones including the Central Business District, and point 1.7 Urbanisation are separate topics with their own case studies. Urbanisation and the problems of rapid urban growth survive into the 2027 syllabus and are written up in the Changing Towns and Cities notes. Urban land use zones and the CBD do not belong in this file and they are not in the 2027 notes either, because they died with point 1.6. They are their own revision file. If you are in the 2026 cohort, make sure you have found it.

The one place where the CBD legitimately appears below is as a service centre with a sphere of influence, because Cambridge Paper 4 has repeatedly compared a CBD, a neighbourhood centre and an out of town mall as three points in a hierarchy of shopping centres. That is service provision, so it is 1.5. Describing the land use of the CBD is 1.6.

1. Settlement patterns

A settlement pattern is the shape made by the buildings of a settlement, or by the settlements themselves, when you look down on them from above. Cambridge names exactly three, so learn exactly three.

Dispersed

A dispersed settlement is a place where the homes are spread over a wide area, with large areas of land between the buildings, so that individual buildings stand isolated.

Characteristics that mark schemes credit:

• buildings are spread out, widely spaced or scattered, and separated from each other;
• each building is surrounded by farmland, woodland or other rural land, often with its own farm;
• there is no obvious pattern, so the arrangement looks haphazard;
• population density and building density are low.

Where it is found: on flat, evenly fertile farmland where water is available almost anywhere, in upland grazing country, and on land divided into large individual farms.

Linear

A linear settlement is one in which the buildings are strung out in a line, usually one or two properties deep, along a single feature.

The feature it follows is nearly always one of:

• a road, giving every property direct access;
• a river or the flat floor of a valley;
• a coastline, or the foot of a steep slope.

A November 2024 mapwork mark scheme accepted, for the reason behind a linear pattern, "Along/on/next to/in/by the road/river/valley" and also "Between river and steep slopes". That last one matters: in a narrow valley the settlement is linear because there is nowhere else flat to build.

Nucleated

A nucleated settlement is one in which the buildings are clustered tightly together around a central point, so the settlement has a compact, dense core.

Reasons a settlement nucleates, taken from a mark scheme that asked candidates to read them off a map:

• a road junction, where several routes meet;
• a defensive site, for example built around a castle or on a hill, for safety;
• a place of worship, a church, mosque or temple, which the village grew around;
• a water source, a spring, well or river.

Identifying a pattern in the exam

Pattern identification is asked in three formats, and all three are worth one mark each, so they are free marks if you are decisive.

Accepted alternative words: clustered for nucleated, scattered or isolated for dispersed, and in a line for linear.

Why different settlement patterns develop

This is the five mark version of the question, and the mark scheme awards a mark either for a stated factor or for a developed example of one, so the safest answer pairs each factor with an example.

1. water available only at a single spring
2. every household must be within walking distance of it
3. buildings crowd around that one point
4. a nucleated settlement develops.

1. valley floor is the only flat, dry, buildable land
2. the road and the river both run along it
3. houses are built either side of the road with no room to spread sideways
4. a linear settlement develops.

Exam trap: the question asks why the patterns develop, not why people settled there at all. Every point must end in a shape.

2. Site, situation, growth and functions

Site and situation

• Site is the actual land a settlement is built on, and its physical qualities: is it flat, is it dry, is there water, is it defensible.
• Situation is the position of the settlement relative to everything around it: other settlements, roads, rivers, the coast, resources.

Site explains why the settlement started there. Situation explains whether it grew.

Physical site factors

The syllabus names relief, soil and water supply explicitly, so those three must be in your answer.

Other factors

Why some settlements grow and others do not

Cambridge asks this as map evidence questions, so the answer must be visible on the resource.

Reasons a settlement has grown into the main town of an area:

• it sits at a road junction or route centre, sometimes described as a nodal point or an intersection, with roads radiating in from all directions;
• it is on a main road, or has a railway;
• it holds a central position within the area, so it is reachable from everywhere;
• it is surrounded by several smaller towns and villages that use it;
• it has the largest population, so it can support the most services and businesses.

Reasons a settlement has not grown:

• no road or transport route reaches it, so it is isolated or remote;
• it lies at one end of the area or on the border rather than centrally;
• the surrounding relief, soil or drainage is poor.

Reasons large areas of a map contain no settlement at all:

• few or no roads, so the area is inaccessible or remote;
• highland, mountains or steep slopes;
• poor soils, so farming cannot support anyone;
• alternatively, land too valuable as farmland to build on;
• low lying land liable to flooding, marshland or swamp;
• lack of water supply, sanitation, electricity or gas.

Settlement functions

The function of a settlement is what it mainly does, the main activity of the people who live in it. A settlement can have more than one function, and functions change over time.

Common functions: market town, port, mining town, industrial town, resort or tourist town, route centre, administrative or capital city, residential or dormitory settlement, university town, fishing village, cultural or religious centre.

1. a coal seam is discovered
2. miners are housed beside the pit
3. shops, a school and a chapel follow to serve them
4. the village becomes a mining settlement
5. the pit later closes
6. the mining function is lost and the village becomes a dormitory settlement for commuters.

3. The settlement hierarchy

A hierarchy of settlements is a way of arranging settlements into order of importance, based on their population size, their physical size, or the services they provide.

That definition is the one Cambridge prints. Note that it accepts population, size or services as the basis for the ranking, so you do not have to choose between them.

The shape of the hierarchy

Three of those rows are Cambridge's own wording. A June 2021 Paper 1 question gave candidates a description and asked them to name the settlement type, and the answers were: a settlement with a few houses and no services is a hamlet; a small settlement with a primary school, surrounded by farmland, is a village; a large settlement with the headquarters of many large businesses and national government buildings is a capital city. Learn those three descriptions in that form, because they are reused.

Cambridge also uses regional planning labels in Paper 2 resources, for example regional town, sub regional town, district town, service centre, local service centre and small settlement. Do not panic at unfamiliar names: the resource always tells you which is higher.

The two relationships examiners test

Almost every Paper 2 hierarchy question turns on one of these two, so learn both directions of each.

Accepted synonyms in mark schemes: negative, inverse, inversely proportional. Positive, direct, directly proportional.

Why the numbers fall as you go up. Higher order settlements need a far larger threshold population to support their services, so an area can only support one or two of them, while it can support dozens of villages.

1. service is high order
2. it needs a very large threshold population
3. only a few places in the region have enough people within reach
4. so there are only a few high order settlements
5. and many low order ones below them.

Anomalies: the "what is unusual" question

Cambridge repeatedly asks candidates to spot the point that breaks the pattern, and this is where careless candidates lose an easy mark. Two real examples:

• In a County Tipperary hierarchy, the number of local service centres (26) was lower than the number of service centres (35) above them, which breaks the expected fall in numbers as you go up. The accepted answer was that it is lower than expected, or lower than the number of service centres.
• In an Antrim hierarchy, one village had a larger population than expected for its position, so it had a high population but a low rank.

The wording that scores is always relative: larger than expected, lower than expected, higher than the tier above it. Naming the settlement alone earns nothing.

4. Services and the hierarchy of services

A service is something provided for people rather than a good manufactured for them: shops, schools, clinics, banks, transport, entertainment, places of worship.

Services form their own hierarchy, and it runs parallel to the settlement hierarchy without being identical to it.

Low, middle and high order

A Paper 4 tick box question defined a low order service as "A service which is frequently used". Frequency of use, not price, is the definition Cambridge printed. Price and specialism follow from it.

The same Paper 4 asked candidates to classify three services and gave the answer as airport = high order, fire station = middle order, bus stop = low order.

Convenience and comparison goods

• Convenience goods are bought frequently and without shopping around: bread, milk, a newspaper. They are sold by low order services.
• Comparison goods are bought rarely, cost more, and shoppers compare several shops before buying: clothes, furniture, jewellery, electrical goods. They are sold by middle and high order services.

This is the mechanism behind the whole topic. Because you compare before buying comparison goods, you will travel to reach a choice of them, so those shops draw customers from a wide area, so few of them are needed.

5. Sphere of influence

The sphere of influence of a settlement or a service is the area from which people travel to use it. It is also correctly described as the catchment area of a service, or the area served by a settlement.

Exam trap, and this is a real one. A March 2023 mark scheme gives explicit instruction: no credit for "the area influenced by a service". Repeating the words of the term back at the examiner scores zero. You must say that it is the area people travel from.

Why spheres of influence differ in size

Cambridge asks this both as a one mark inference and as a three or five mark explanation.

Why high order services have a large sphere of influence:

• there are few of them, and they are widely spaced and far apart, so most people do not have one near home;
• they sell comparison, specialist or luxury goods, or expensive items;
• they are used infrequently, so it is worth the expense and time of travelling;
• they have a high threshold population, so they must draw people from a large area to survive;
• they are usually easily accessible, on main roads, at road junctions, or with good public transport, and they have parking.

1. a service sells expensive comparison goods
2. people buy them only a few times a year
3. they are willing to travel a long way for the trip
4. the shop can draw customers from a wide area
5. its sphere of influence is large
6. only a few such shops are needed in a region.

Why low order services have a small sphere of influence and a low threshold population:

• people are not prepared to travel far for low cost items they use every day, so a long trip is not worth it;
• there are lots of them, so a nearer one is always available;
• because they are used frequently, a small number of customers still provides enough regular income to make a profit, so few people are needed to justify providing one.

Exam trap: a March 2022 mark scheme explicitly awarded zero for "large variety of goods" as a reason a high order service has a large sphere of influence. Variety is a characteristic of the shop, not a reason people travel. Write about infrequency of use, cost, specialism and scarcity instead.

Why spheres of influence overlap

Two supermarkets in neighbouring towns often have overlapping catchments. Accepted reasons:

• some people do not go to their nearest supermarket, so the behaviour is not perfectly efficient;
• people prefer different goods, or different brands, from different shops;
• people have other reasons for going to that town, such as work, school or another appointment, and shop while they are there.

Why a sphere of influence is not a circle

Textbook diagrams draw circles. Real ones are lopsided, and Paper 2 asks why. Accepted reasons for a sphere being stretched in one direction:

• it extends along a road, because transport that way is quicker and easier;
• the land in one direction is upland and sparsely populated, so a bigger area is needed there to reach the same threshold population;
• there are fewer competing services in that direction;
• a rival settlement or service on the other side cuts the catchment short.

Drawing one in the exam. If asked to draw the sphere of influence of a named second order settlement on a map, the mark scheme wanted a shape that included at least two nearby smaller settlements but excluded the neighbouring settlements of equal rank. That is the rule: a settlement's catchment stops roughly halfway to its nearest rival of the same order.

6. Threshold population

The threshold population of a service is the minimum number of people required to make that service profitable, or to support it.

That is the exact Cambridge definition, and the word minimum is what earns the mark.

How threshold and sphere of influence lock together. They are two views of the same thing. The threshold is a number of people. The sphere of influence is the area you need to cover to find that many people.

1. a service has a high threshold population
2. the local settlement alone does not contain enough customers
3. the service must attract people from surrounding settlements as well
4. so it locates in the largest, most accessible settlement
5. and its sphere of influence is large.

1. population density in an area is low
2. more square kilometres are needed to reach the same threshold population
3. so the sphere of influence must stretch further
4. which is why rural services serve wide, thinly populated catchments.

A note on "range"

The range of a service is the maximum distance people are willing to travel to use it. It is not printed in the 0460 further guidance for 1.5, which names only sphere of influence and threshold population. However, a June 2021 mark scheme did credit "have a larger range / be used by people living further away" as a valid difference between high and low order services. So the term is safe to use as a bonus, but never write it instead of sphere of influence or threshold population, which are the terms the syllabus actually names.

7. Comparing rural and urban service provision

Point 1.5 covers settlements "rural and urban", and Cambridge asks candidates to contrast the two directly. Every point must be comparative.

Why service provision changes over time

Cambridge gave candidates the same eight settlements in 1990 and in 2018 and asked them to explain why some had gained services and others had lost them. The accepted reasons:

• the population size rose or fell, because people migrated in or out;
• so demand for the service rose or fell;
• so the service became more or less profitable;
• the threshold population for that service was exceeded, or was no longer met;
• wealth and income in the area rose or fell;
• transport changed: rising car ownership lets rural people drive to a larger town, and a withdrawn bus service strands those who cannot;
• tourist visits rose or fell;
• more online shopping means fewer visits to physical shops.

1. car ownership rises in a village
2. residents drive to the supermarket in the nearby town instead
3. the village shop loses trade
4. its turnover falls below the threshold it needs
5. the shop closes
6. residents without a car now have no shop at all, and the remaining services become less viable in turn.

That last chain is the spiral of rural decline, and it is the single most useful explanation in this section.

The reverse also happens, and Cambridge tested it: a settlement can gain services when commuters or retirees move in, when tourism grows, or when new housing raises the population past the threshold for a supermarket.

8. Case study: settlement and service provision in an area

The syllabus requires one case study of settlement and service provision in an area. Mark schemes are unusually generous about what counts: "Candidates can choose any size settlement", and one 2023 version allowed "a named rural area or rural settlement". So a village, a rural district or a town all work.

Scale still matters. Cambridge enforces the scale of a named example. A November 2024 mark scheme on a different topic states the rule plainly: "Country name is unacceptable e.g. Brazil, but an appropriate named rural area could be Amazonia." Naming a country as your studied area will be treated as no example at all, which caps a 7 mark answer at 5. Name a district, a county, a valley or a town.

What Level 3 requires

The mark scheme for the 7 mark version is the same every year:

Cambridge then tells you exactly what "place specific reference" means for this topic: population size, locational details, the specific names of the services, and the names of other nearby settlements.

So your case study needs, at minimum:

1. the name of the area and where it is;
2. the population of the main settlement and of one or two smaller ones;
3. the names of real services, not "a shop" but the actual supermarket, school and hospital;
4. the order of each service, low, middle or high;
5. the sphere of influence of at least one of them, with a distance;
6. the names of the surrounding settlements that use it;
7. the explanation, threshold population, profitability, competition and accessibility, running through the whole thing.

A worked example: County Tipperary, Ireland

Cambridge itself published a hierarchy for County Tipperary in a June 2021 Paper 2 resource, and the figures below are taken from that published resource rather than from any other source.

The hierarchy of the county

What the pattern shows

• The relationship is negative: one regional town at the top, 58 small settlements at the bottom.
• There is a clear anomaly: only 26 local service centres against 35 service centres above them, which breaks the expected rise in numbers as you descend.

Individual settlements, and why they sit where they do

• Clonmel is the regional town, the highest in the hierarchy, so it holds the county's high order services and the largest sphere of influence. Cambridge asked candidates to identify a disadvantage of its location and accepted that it is isolated from the rest of the county, at one end of it, on the border, and not central. A high order centre placed off centre leaves part of its county underserved.
• Cahir grew into an important settlement because it sits at a road junction, a route centre where several radial roads converge from all sides, so it is accessible from every direction.
• Templemore did not grow into a larger settlement because it has no road or transport route reaching it, leaving it isolated and remote.

The explanation to write. The county can support only one regional town because high order services such as a general hospital and comparison shopping need a threshold population that only the whole county provides. It can support 58 small settlements because the services they hold, a food store or a bus stop, need almost no threshold at all. Accessibility decides which settlement climbs: Cahir sits where the roads meet and rose, Templemore sits off the network and did not.

A second area: South Holland, Lincolnshire, England

A November 2020 Paper 2 resource mapped the settlement hierarchy of the South Holland district in eastern England, and the same reasoning applies.

• Spalding became the main town because it is close to a road junction, has a railway, sits fairly centrally in the district and lies on a main road.
• The second order settlements include Long Sutton, Holbeach and Sutton Bridge. The mark scheme for drawing Long Sutton's sphere of influence required a shape that took in at least two nearby smaller settlements but did not reach Holbeach or Sutton Bridge, because those are its rivals of equal rank.
• The district contains 11 third order settlements, and unlike the second order ones only some of them are on roads.
• The distribution of settlements across the district is uneven, and the accepted reasons were differences in relief, drainage, agriculture, mineral wealth and industrial development.

Building your own

The strongest answer is about an area you have actually studied, because you will have real numbers for it. Collect them before the exam:

• the population of your main town and of two villages near it, from the census;
• three named services in the town and the order of each;
• one service that exists in the town but not in the villages;
• roughly how far people travel to that service;
• one settlement nearby that has lost a service, and why.

9. Fieldwork links for Paper 4

Settlement and service provision has been a whole Paper 4 investigation more than once, so this section is worth as much as the content above. Two hypotheses recur.

Hypothesis 1: there is a positive correlation between the population size of settlements and the number of different services found in the settlement.

Hypothesis 2: people travel further to use high order services than low order services.

Collecting the data

Designing the questionnaire

Cambridge has asked for three features of a good questionnaire and, separately, three pieces of advice on using one. They are different lists.

Features of a good questionnaire

• an introduction explaining who is asking and why;
• aimed at the right target group, with questions relevant to the hypothesis;
• simple, short, clear language, quick to complete;
• space to record gender and age, and the time and date;
• space to write answers, or tick boxes;
• a mixture of closed and open questions, with the easy ones first;
• nothing personal or offensive, so no address or income, and keep it anonymous;
• a thank you at the end.

Advice on carrying it out

• work in pairs or groups, never alone;
• do not block the pavement or a shop entrance;
• be polite, thank people, and accept that some will refuse;
• ask a range of people, or every tenth person, to get a representative or random sample;
• choose a time when the shops are open and people are about;
• ask the same number of people at each site so the results can be compared fairly.

Presenting and concluding

• Scatter graph for Hypothesis 1: population on one axis, number of services on the other. Plot each settlement.
• Dispersion graph or bar graph for Hypothesis 2: distance travelled, one cross per respondent, one graph per service.
• Desire line map for spheres of influence.
• Pie graph for reasons people gave for choosing a centre.

How to write the conclusion, and this is where most marks are lost. The mark scheme reserves one mark for a clear verdict, and it awards that mark only for "the hypothesis is true" or "the hypothesis is false" as appropriate. "Partially true" scores zero. Commit.

Then support it with paired data: two named settlements, or two named services, with their actual figures compared. For example, the settlement with a population of 12,226 had 11 services while the settlement with a population of 201 had 1 service. Or, the average distance travelled to the clothes shop was 16 km while the average to the hairdresser was 3.9 km. One pair, one mark, up to the cap.

Reliability points

• ask the same number of people at each site;
• increase the sample size;
• repeat the survey on a different day of the week, because a market day distorts a pedestrian count;
• record the date, time and weather, because all three change how many people are out.

10. Common exam mistakes

• Defining sphere of influence as "the area influenced by the service". A mark scheme states explicitly that this earns no credit. Say it is the area people travel from.
• Defining threshold population without the word minimum.
• Answering "why does a high order service have a large sphere of influence" with "it has a large variety of goods". A March 2022 mark scheme scored that zero.
• Explaining why settlement patterns develop without ever naming a pattern. Every point must end in dispersed, linear or nucleated.
• Giving the same settlement pattern twice when a question shows two contrasting areas.
• Describing a relationship without stating its direction. "There is a relationship" earns nothing; "negative relationship, the higher in the hierarchy the fewer the settlements" earns the mark.
• Naming the anomalous settlement instead of saying what is unusual about it. The mark is for "larger than expected", not for the name.
• Answering a comparison question one sided. "Urban areas have hospitals" is half a comparison; add what the rural area has instead.
• Naming a country as your case study area. Cambridge treats a country name as an inappropriate example and caps the 7 mark answer at 5.
• Naming an area but giving no population figures, no service names and no distances. That is Level 2, not Level 3.
• Writing "partially true" in a Paper 4 conclusion. It scores zero. Choose true or false.
• Answering a Paper 4 method question with "find out" or "look at". The mark scheme wants visit, go to, walk, count, record.
• Drifting into urban land use zones and the CBD on a 1.5 question. That is point 1.6 and a different case study.

11. Quick revision

• Three settlement patterns: dispersed (scattered, separated by farmland, no obvious pattern), linear (in a line along a road, river or valley), nucleated (clustered around a junction, water source, church or defensive site).
• Site is the land the settlement is built on. Situation is its position relative to everything else.
• Physical site factors: relief, soil, water supply, plus shelter, aspect, building materials and flood risk.
• Other factors: accessibility and resources, plus defence, market function and administration.
• A settlement grows if it is at a route centre, on a main road or railway, and central. It stagnates if it is isolated with no road.
• Hierarchy of settlements: arranging settlements in order of importance by population, size or services.
• Hierarchy against number of settlements is negative. Hierarchy against population is positive. Settlement size against order of services is positive.
• Low order service: frequently used, cheap, everywhere, small sphere, low threshold. Example, a bus stop.
• Middle order: a fire station. High order: an airport.
• Sphere of influence: the area from which people travel to use a service. Never "the area influenced by it".
• Threshold population: the minimum number of people needed to make a service profitable.
• High order means used rarely, expensive, specialist, few of them, so people will travel far, so a large sphere and a high threshold.
• Spheres overlap because people do not always use the nearest, prefer different goods, or are in town for another reason.
• Spheres stretch along roads and across sparsely populated ground, and stop halfway to a rival of equal rank.
• Rural service decline: population falls or people gain cars → demand falls → the threshold is no longer met → the service closes → the remaining services become less viable.
• Case study must be an area, district or settlement, never a country. Level 3 needs population size, locational detail, named services and named neighbouring settlements.
• Paper 4: service survey plus census, questionnaire asking where people live, desire lines, scatter graph. Conclude true or false, never partially, and support with paired data.

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