Presented by Amanda Welch-Alleyne

 A service is any activity that fulfills a human want or need and returns money to those who provide it.  Services are present and provided in all societies.  In More Developed Countries, two thirds of the GDP is made up from services.

There are three types of services:  Consumer Services  Business Services  Public Services

 Business that provide services primarily to individual consumers who are able to afford them.  These include retail and wholesale services, education services, health services, and leisure and hospitality services.  Consumer Services make up 44% of US jobs

 Services that primarily meet the needs of other businesses.  Such services include financial services, professional services, transportation services, and information services.  Business services make up 24% of US jobs

 services offered by the government to provide security and protection for citizens and businesses  Examples of public services lie within services that the federal, state, and local governments provide to their citizens; schools, parks, fire and police department.  Public services make up 17% of US jobs

In the time period between 1972 and 2009:  There was a decline in employment in primary and secondary job sectors  Rapid expansion of professional services, in fields such as engineering, management and law  Slow growth in finance and transportation services due to improved effficiency

 Rapid increase in health care services, like nursing homes and home health care  Large increases in education, entertainment and recreation  Employees involved in public services have gradually declined over the past two decades

 Prior to the establishment of permanent settlements, people lived as nomads  Archeological studies predict that settlements were established first for consumer and public services

 The earliest permanent settlements were designed to offer consumer services, like burial of the dead and housing for families  People developed the need for tools, clothing, shelter, containers, fuel, and other material goods  Consequently, settlements became manufacturing centers

 Public services followed religious activities into early permanent settlements  Soldiers emerged because members of the settlement were vulnerable to attack  Settlements were methods of protecting food sources against competitors, like building walls  Settlements became centers for military power

 The necessity for food was a common ground for everyone in the settlement, which led to hunting and gathering, and eventually the processes of storing extra food  Settlements became the place where people were able to trade goods and services, which led to record keeping, currency system, and the establishment of fair prices

 First documented urban settlements were well planned cities in Mesopotamia  Ancient Athens was the first Mediterranean settlement and largest city-state, and became trading centers for thousands of islands  In Ancient Rome, the rise of the Roman Empire encouraged urban settlement; such as centers for administrative and military services, and retail consumer services

 Rural settlements are centers of agriculture that provide small amounts of services  A clustered rural settlement is a place where a number of families live in close proximity to each other  A dispersed rural settlement is characterized by farmers living on individual farms isolated from neighbors

 Circular rural settlements are circular forms that consists of a central open space surrounded by structures  Linear rural settlements are comprised of building clustered along a road, river or dike to facilitate communications

 Population of urban settlements exceeded that of rural settlements for the first time in human history in 2008  Urbanization is the process by which the population of urban settlements grows  Two dimensions of urbanization: the number of people living in cities increase, and the percent of people living in cities increase

 Differences were defined by Louis Wirth in 1900s  Defined cities by three characteristics  Wirth argued these characteristics produced differences in the social behavior of urban and rural residents

 Helps explain how the most profitable location can be identified  Was first proposed in the 1930s by German geographer Walter Christaller, and was further developed in the United States in the 1950s

 A central place is a market center for the exchange of goods and services by people attracted from the surrounding area  Central places compete against each other to serve as markets for goods and services for the surrounding region

 The area surrounding a service from which customers are attracted is the market area or hinterland  Market area is like a region with a core where the characteristic is most intense  To establish a market area, a circle is drawn around a node of service on a map

 The maximum distance people are willing to travel for use of a service  People are willing to go short distances for everyday services

 Minimum number of people needed to support the service  Every business has a minimum number of customers required to generate enough sales to make a profit

 Profitability of a location; basically means is a good or service going to be profitable in a certain location

 Small settlements are limited to consumer services that have small thresholds, short ranges, and small market area  Larger settlements provide services having larger thresholds, ranges, and market areas.

 Rank size rule: country’s nth-largest settlement is 1/nth of the population of the largest settlement  This is important because a country that follows the rank-size rule tends to be a society that is sufficiently wealthy to justify the provision of goods and services to consumers

 The largest settlement has more than twice as many people as the second ranking settlement  LDCs often follow primate rule

 Collection of individual vendors who come together to offer goods and services in a location on specified days  Typically set up in a street or public space  Vendors are part-time, mobile, and provide small quantities

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