The location of cities and towns are not always dependent upon transportation and economy. During the early days, people used to settle at places with militant communities. This helped them feel safe and protected. Some cities owe their importance to religion and sacred beliefs. Political reasons can also be one to account for this matter.
Cities develop in places where there is scope for production and industries. And these can have an independent influence. However, transportation plays its part when it is about determining the location of these industries. Wherever there is a break in transportation, population and wealth tend to collect.
What is this break? It is an interruption in the movement of goods, which may cause them to get stored temporarily. This can change the ownership of the transported goods and opens people to get in and create enormous structures. With time, buildings would be made to store these people and also the goods. Means of transportation will start to develop around, to transport the goods. Soon, more people will get in. Agriculture and trade will get started. This is how a town can create, wherever there is a break in transportation.
Thus, a city that starts with commerce carries forward to create a society of manufacturers, traders, and even politicians.
Now the question that arises is when these breaks have such significant consequences, why do they occur? The most important cause of this is physical interruptions such as between land and water. Most of the commercial towns are located at the junctions of land and water.
These breaks are not just limited to land and water. Wherever the technical apparatus of vehicles and forces have to change, breaks can occur. For example, water transportation is found at the point of rivers where sea-going vessels must be exchanged for the lighter and shallower craft. This is a significant factor for developing commercial towns.
There are also towns, whose location depends upon the meeting of two kinds of land transport. As much as rivers have been a factor, the railways are not just connecting places but making new ones. However, there is no necessary break in areas with the intersection of railways, hence no new places necessarily.
If we consider a mechanical break such as perfect arrangements for interchange of cars, we may make intersections, but that doesn’t affect much. Even if many freight and passengers are interchanged, all that’s needed is a restaurant and an insignificant junction.
What is to be noticed is that the number of breaks represents the expense of transportation. The tendency to dispense with the smaller ones by interchanging vehicles, consolidation of lines, and more are part of the division of labour.
We can conclude that urban location gets influenced by both economic and non-economic reasons. However, two influences are the significant factors of determining the location of cities: local facilities for production and local relations to transportation. Out of the two, Manufacturing is more vital, considering that manufacturers look out for ways to distribute their products.
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