Human Settlement
The patterns of settlement by the human species have transformed the world like
nothing else. From humanity’s origins in Africa, to its diaspora across the globe,
human settlement in all its complexity has evolved in untold ways, including the
transmogrification of the natural earth. From the simplest human settlements
to the metropolises and informal settlements that today are expanding to house
a majority of humanity, we must not only understand their demographics and
the built environments they build and occupy. We must also understand the
institutions that (too often fail to) govern them, the diseases that temper them,
the crops and trades that sustain them, and the humanitarian phenomena that
plague them when things go wrong. MapStory offers this space for all kinds of
StoryLayers and MapStories, both historical and present-day, which capture the
drivers and impacts of human settlement across the globe.
