Planning a settlement

Each stage has a check. Do not move on until it passes.

Screen every candidate site against the same six questions before anyone builds, and reject a site that fails any of the first three. The procedure is in choosing the ground.

Ground per person sets everything else. Too little, and the camp or town cannot fit its own latrines, firebreaks, streets and open space; those are what get squeezed out first.

Plan the smallest unit and repeat it, so every service sits at a walking distance by design and anyone can be found.

• Family: 4 to 6 people, one plot.
• Community: 16 families, about 80 people, sharing a latrine block and a water point.
• Block: 16 communities, about 1,250 people.
• Sector: 4 blocks, about 5,000.
• Settlement: 4 sectors, 20,000 at most.

Straight paths between every row, wide enough for a stretcher and a water cart. Number every plot, on the plan and on a stake. Reserve ground for a health post (one per 10,000 people), a school (one per 5,000), a distribution point and a market, and stake it so it stays empty. In a town the same idea becomes the block of plots with two accesses in plot, street and block.

Fix the width between property lines before anyone builds; pave later. A street too narrow for its traffic, its drains and its pipes can only be widened by demolition. Widths for new urban areas from India's urban roads manual (IRC:SP:118-2018), with the camp and small-town minimums for comparison:

Reserve the land for everyone before the plots are sold; once built on, it cannot be bought back cheaply (plan the city).

• Streets: at least 30 % of the land, at 18 km of street per km² (UN-Habitat).
• Open public space: 15–20 % of the land in dense mixed areas, and within a 400 m walk of every home — the measure used by the UN's indicator 11.7.1.
• Public transport: a bus or tram stop within a 500 m walk of every home, or a rail or ferry station within 1 km (indicator 11.2.1). Arterials about 1 km apart put a bus route within about a 10-minute walk of everyone.
• Services in a camp: a health post for every 10,000 people, a school for every 5,000, a distribution point and a market (UNHCR), staked so they stay empty.
• Services in a town: sites for schools, clinics, markets and fire stations, and flood land and steep slopes kept as parks.

Measure each walking distance along the streets, not as the crow flies.

Clean water in and foul water out, and the two never cross. Every other rule here serves that one.

• Latrines: within 50 m of every shelter; at least 30 m from any water source, and downhill of it; pit bottoms at least 1.5 m above the highest groundwater; one per 50 people in an emergency, then one per family.
• Water points: within 500 m of every household; one tap per 500 people at first, one per 250 as the camp settles; 15 litres per person per day; uphill of the latrines, on hard standing that drains.
• Rain: camp drains along the fall at about 2 %; town streets falling 1 in 100 to 1 in 200 to side drains; every outfall below the water supply. Where a drain must cross a water line, the water line goes over.
• Once a year, walk the path of clean water from source to tap and of foul water from every latrine to its outfall, and show that they never meet.

A settlement of wood, thatch or sheeting burns as one building unless the plan breaks it up.

• Camps: at least 2 m between shelters, ideally twice their height; a 30 m firebreak for every 300 m of shelters, kept bare.
• Towns: break every row with a gap, several metres or a street wide, or with a masonry party wall that rises above the roof line; keep thatch and open fires apart; put a well or cistern within about 100 m of every building, reserved for fire.
• Everywhere: cook outside or in a separate kitchen, and keep a bucket of water or sand at every fire.

The firebreak is also the escape route and the place people gather, which is one more reason it must stay empty.

Separate only what emits — odour, dust, noise or the risk of a major accident — and mix everything else (zoning). Shops, offices, schools, clinics and quiet workshops belong among the homes; UN-Habitat holds single-function blocks under 10 % of any neighbourhood and puts at least 40 % of floor space in economic use.

For the works that must be separated: record the wind for at least a year and draw the wind rose; put the works downwind of the homes, downstream of the water intake, and never up-valley of anyone; and zone from the homes outwards, light works nearest and heavy works furthest. Recommended distances to the nearest home (EPA Victoria, 2024):

Map every hazard before you build, and keep homes and critical services off the worst ground. Flood first, because it is the most common and the most predictable. England's flood zones (NPPF Annex F):

Cities grow faster in area than in people. In a global sample, urban land cover grew twice as fast as urban population in the 1990s, and built-up densities fell about 2 % a year (Angel, 2011). Growth that arrives before the streets is expensive to fix: in Bogotá, correcting an irregular settlement cost 2.7 times as much as planning it in the first place (Smolka, 2003).

1. Project 20–30 years of population and density, and make the expansion area at least 50 % larger than those alone suggest.
2. Peg an arterial grid about 1 km apart over the whole area, continuous and joined to the existing roads (the figure in plan the city).
3. Acquire only the rights-of-way at first, and build each road as the city reaches it.
4. Let landowners develop on condition that they give part of their land for streets and public use; buy at a published valuation only where that cannot work.
5. Lay the trunk water and sewer mains under the arterials, sized for the whole expansion area, in common ducts where feasible.

A plan nobody can see is not a plan.

• Publish the map, the street classes, the zones, the reserved land and the rules, with the date the plan was adopted and the date it will be reviewed.
• Register every parcel's zone and every right-of-way in the land register.
• Decide every permit by measurement against the plan — distances, widths, flood zone — and publish each decision.
• Change the plan only by a published amendment.
• Let lawful earlier uses continue but not grow, and end the right when the use stops for two years (zoning).
• Measure and publish by neighbourhood at every review: density, street share, homes within 500 m of a stop and 400 m of open space, and disaster losses — then extend the grid ahead of the growth (the resilient city).