The book is a teaching and research experience-based mature and scholarly outcome to meet the felt-need of both students and teachers. Adopting holistic view of the discipline, it embodies quantitative as well as qualitative analytical and synthesizing approach to the study of rural settlements and thus covers wide spectrum of all the five principal themes of cultural geography and other distinct themes of histogenesis/morphogenesis and process of setting; diffusion models; spatio-temporal models; place names; village unit; site, situation and location; anatomy of Indian villages; types and patterns; distribution of rural settlements; origin and growth of morphology; shape analysis; rural dwellings; service centres; and integrated planning and rationalization of rural settlements. This is all well befitting the syllabi of universities for graduate classes and highly responsive to researchers.
