Settlement patterns in Nyeri district

Abstract

Buildings are a physical imprint of man's occupation of an area and they represent a summary of man's activities and his way of life in given circumstances. This study is aimed at presentip~ a detailed description, classification al~ explanation of settlement patterns in Nyeri District. This study was dote on two geographical scales. On a small scale it tried to identify the settlement patterns whereas on a large seal e it checked if the settlements Can be classified according to the ge rer al settlements classification. In both cases the study tried to identify the Locat Io II factors The rayj(-size rule formula vas applied to the urban centres in Nyeri District in order to check whether- they are normally distributed Nearest neighbour analysis was applied to each of the remaining categories of designated centres i 11 the District , H!1ereas for settlements below local centres the analys is vas dam in 7 sampled locations. Four settlement categories were indentified in a descending order of complexity , namely urban centres Ichagi (villages), Matuura (hamlets) and Micii (isolated homesteads). Further results of this study showed that Nyeri is a primate urban centre (town). This is due to the fact that Kenya is a developing country, urban phenomenon is recent and that !>'ycri was pr-ef'er-ent La'lLy cr-eat ed and helped to grOl The pattern of each category of other designated centres is between random and clustered. For settlements other than designated centres the pntter ns are as follow.st-« :i) Naromor-u and Mweiga Locat i.o ns between clustered and r-andom but with a higher tei~dr.~nC'y towards clustering. ii) Tetu location - near-ost to complet e random but Hith a tendency towards dispersion. iii) Othaya, Ching a , Muhitoan