The rural settlement within the Malda district highlights human attempts for the livelihood and building the habitat on the diverse geographical landscapes. The characteristics of its natural endowments, social conditionality and historical antecedents and most importantly the human efforts gave the rural countryside a certain kind of social and morphological characteristics. The morphological characteristics of the villages have been collected from the different natural regions of the districts in order to understand the divergent forces and feature of it. This paper has focused on understanding the settlement pattern in the Malda district in the three broad geographic regions of it namely Tal, Diara and Barind.
Key Words: Village, Morphological structure, Geographical landscapes, landuse, The Malda district.
Introduction:
Settlement morphology is primarily concerned with the lay-out, plan and internal structure of the settlements. It not only views settled area in terms of physical space but identifies its various components in respect of socio-economic space which has its direct bearing in controlling the arrangement of buildings, patterns of streets and fields and functional characteristics of settlements in general. Types, Form and Pattern constitute the three basic elements of morphology of rural settlements. Type would refer to three sets of formal and functional relationship: I) house to house, II) street to street and III) street to street. The inherent principle of village morphology is the human instinct of gregariousness. To have a comprehensive view of settlement, it deals with the morphogenesis and the morphological structure of rural settlement. Besides the geometrical shape, this is visualized through air view or on a well drawn map, as one aspects of the form of a settlement, the internal arrangement of lanes, houses, with varies relationship, provide another aspect, named as morphology, hence morphological structure. The morphological
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