الخصائص التوزيعية لمراكز الاستيطان الريفي في منطقة المدينة المنورة

Abstract EN

Development plans in Saudi Arabia emphasizes the importance of the movement toward the overall regional development with an aim of givinganequitabledistributionofdevelopmentalloverregionsofSaudi Arabia.

That would lead the development of rural areas.

especially with Thedeclining of thepopulationof the rural sectorandtheincrease in the population of the urban population, which led to increased urbanization rates, particularly in reference to occasional rural - urbanization phenomena.

This study sheds light on one of the rural sector in the Kingdom in an attempt to answer a series of preliminary questions related to studying and analyzing the spatial distribution of the rural settlementintheareaofAl-MadinahAl-MunawarahusingGeographic Information Systems.

The study examines and highlights four key points.

Firstly, studying the numerical distribution of villages, according to the number and the intensity of the villages, and spacing average.

Secondly, studying the hieratical distribution of rural settlements, according to three principles: the hieratical of rural population size, the pattern of housing area and services, and the spacing average.

Thirdly, studying the spatial distribution, through the analysis of physical and human factors affecting and forming this distribution.

Fourthly, studying the spatial analysis of rural settlement using quantitative analytical methods, by means of analyzing geographic distributions patterns focusing on the nearest neighbor analysis such as the average nearest neighbor distance, measuring geographical distribution using measures of central tendency (mean center - center feature), and finally measuring the dispersion of rural settlement (standard distance - directional distribution).