village. Here the homes of the settlement are arranged around a central open
“commons” area (sometimes referred to as the “greens”) that is owned by the local
community, and which may be used for a variety of general purposes, although crop
production is rarely allowed. The commons is frequently laid out as a square or rec-
tangle, with streets radiating away from it at right angles. Larger planned rural com-
munities may take on a so-called checkerboard structure, in which the homes are
spaced at regular intervals with property lines meeting at right angles, forming a
grid pattern.
Some patterns of rural settlement follow a more dispersed spatial pattern. These
may appear as semi-clustered settlements, or as isolated, individual homesteads.
The latter pattern is common in areas of plains that were developed by European
colonists during the past two centuries and is frequently encountered in the interior
plains regions of the United States and Canada, much of the outback of Australia,
and in the veldt of southern Africa. Settled by pioneers, or in the case of South
Africa, Boers, these areas were claimed from native peoples and opened to indi-
vidual farmers and ranchers, who were provided land grants by their respective
governments. The result is an isolated pattern of settlement, often with several
miles separating each farmstead. In hilly or mountainous terrain, smaller semi-
clustered settlements are frequently the rule, and these may be linked by religious
or familial connections. In some cases, the entire settlement, consisting of several
dozen family units, may all be related through blood and marriage ties. “Row vil-
lages” occur in rugged or marshy landscapes in central Europe, Latin America,
and North America. In this type of settlement houses are spaced farther apart than
in a typical street village, but generally follow a linear feature, often a river, rail-
way, or canal. The agricultural land extends away from the homes in an elongated
rectangular pattern, forming what rural geographers call “long lot” holdings, and
this type of settlement may be called a “long lot village.”290 Rural Settlement