How the Environment Shaped Settlement: Egypt, Japan, Brazil and the Arctic

Let's start with a question

Why are there so many high-rise towers in Hong Kong? Hong Kong is very hilly, with steep slopes coming down to the sea. There is little flat land, and millions of people need homes. So instead of spreading out, the city builds up. Some of its flat land was even made by filling in parts of the harbour.

In the last lesson you learned the physical factors that influence settlement. Now you'll analyse real countries and regions to see how those factors have shaped where people live.

Egypt: a river in the desert

Egypt is almost all desert, with very little rain. The Nile River flows north through the desert to the Mediterranean Sea. For thousands of years, the Nile flooded each summer and left behind fertile silt. With Nile water for irrigation and fertile soil, farmers could grow plenty of food in a narrow green strip along the river and in the wide delta.

As a result, the vast majority of Egyptians live in the Nile Valley and Delta, which make up only a small fraction of the country's land. Cairo, one of Africa's largest cities, is near the point where the river spreads out into the delta. Away from the river, the desert has very few people.

The Aswan High Dam, completed in 1970, now controls the floods and provides water for irrigation and electricity. But it also traps silt behind it, so farmers downstream rely more on fertilizer. Egypt is also building new cities in the desert, including a new capital east of Cairo, to ease crowding in the Nile Valley.

Japan: mountains and crowded plains

Japan is a country of islands. Roughly three-quarters of its land is mountains and hills, much of it forested. So most people live on the small coastal plains and in river valleys. The largest is the Kantō Plain, home to the Tokyo region, which the United Nations ranks as the world's largest urban area (about 37 million people in 2018).

Because flat land is scarce, Japanese cities are dense, farmers have built terraced fields on hillsides, and cities have reclaimed land from the sea. Japan also sits where tectonic plates meet (you learned about plates in Grade 7), so it has many earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes. Japanese cities use strict building codes, sea walls and warning systems.

Brazil: a coast-heavy pattern

Brazil is the largest country in South America. Most Brazilians live in the east, near the Atlantic coast, in large cities such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The coast has harbours for trade, and the southeast has fertile soils and a milder climate on higher land.

Much of northern Brazil is covered by the Amazon rainforest: hot, very wet, thickly forested and crossed by huge rivers. It is sparsely populated. Many Indigenous peoples live in the Amazon today, and riverside towns are spread along the rivers, which are the main highways. The city of Manaus grew on the Rio Negro near where it joins the Amazon, and much of its trade still travels by river.

In 1960, Brazil moved its capital inland from Rio de Janeiro to the newly built city of Brasília, partly to encourage people to settle the interior.

Canada's Arctic: adapting to a cold environment

Inuit have lived in the Arctic for thousands of years and have deep knowledge of its land, sea and ice. Today most people in Inuit Nunangat live in clustered communities on the coast. The sea and sea ice provide animals for hunting and fishing, and ships bring a year's supply of heavy goods (fuel, building materials, vehicles) during the short summer when the sea is open. Nunavut's communities have no road connection to southern Canada, so people and mail travel by air.

Much of the ground is permafrost. A heated building sitting directly on permafrost could melt the ice in the ground and sink or tilt, so many buildings are raised on piles (posts) with an air gap underneath. Water and sewage are often delivered and collected by truck in many communities, because pipes in frozen ground are costly and difficult to build.