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The jobs people do sometimes depends on where they live. Let's find out how the places people live in can affect the type of work that they do.

There are lots of different types of jobs available in cities. A city is a type of settlement, which has been awarded city status by the monarch.

Generally, cities are large and have a population of over 100,000. They are important centres of business and provide many people with jobs.

The United Kingdom has four capital cities:

• London in England
• Edinburgh in Scotland
• Cardiff in Wales
• Belfast in Northern Ireland

Each of these capitals governs their countries through their Parliament, which are all linked to the Central Government in London.

The UK is divided into counties, which are areas of local government.

In the past, each county was surrounding a county town or city, which is how many of the counties were given their names, such as Derby and Derbyshire or Lincoln and Lincolnshire. Some of these have now changed, but the county kept its name.

The first cities were mostly Roman and developed around ports.

The Industrial Revolution also influenced the growth of cities. Many people moved from the countryside to live in cities and work in the factories.

Cities spread further as new homes were built and commuter towns were built nearby to create new homes for people working in the cities.

Modern cities have changed and adapted as industry and business changed. New industries such as digital and IT have developed and replaced some of the manufacturing. Apartment blocks have been built to provide housing in city centres rather than in the suburbs.

Settlements in the UK are located where they are for different reasons:

• Physical features such as rivers and hills were most important when people first settled in a location.

• Most old settlements are located near rivers because a water supply was needed for people to survive. Sometimes, they changed them to allow the city to develop. The course of rivers would be changed to allow for roads and fields would get drained to create space for more houses.

• Settlements on hills allowed people to defend themselves as the good views meant they could see enemies approaching.

• Many settlements grew because of the natural resources nearby.

• They formed near forests, so there was wood for burning and building.

• They formed near mines and quarries, with the stones needed for building, making tools and jewellery. Some of these were abandoned when the mining stopped, others grew and changed with time.

Cities like York developed in places where it was easy to supply the city with enough food and people, either

• over land by road, or
• by a river providing access to the sea.

• Cities on the coast, like Plymouth and Glasgow, developed because of their uses as ports, with ships bringing food and goods from all over the world.
• Other towns formed around the crossroads of travel routes, becoming important market cities.

When a settlement was founded, there was always a reason:

• it was the centre of buying and selling
• its location on the coast could have led to its growth as a holiday resort
• some settlements developed around an industry such as textile mills
• and some developed near mines and quarries.

That is why different settlements are organised differently and there are different jobs available.

• In a seaside resort, you have the tourist industry, so there are jobs in hotels, hospitality and entertainment.

• In a port, you find jobs on ships and in fishing.

• There is still manufacturing in a lot of cities, so there are jobs in factories. However, there has been a decline in manufacturing, so there are more jobs in the service industries such as banking, IT, communications and the wholesale and retail trade.

• In smaller towns in more rural locations, there are jobs in farming and tourism.

Land in cities and settlements is used in different ways. Different types of land use can be:

Over time, many of the towns transformed and developed further, moving away from their original purpose.

With more trade links, some towns and cities grew into centres of making products from local or imported raw materials.

As these towns and cities changed, so did the way the land was used.

For example, Warrington, a town in England, has grown and the land use changed. The churches stayed the same, but the iron works have been replaced by a college. As the town grew, more people moved to Warrington for jobs. This created a need for more houses, which were built on the surrounding fields. Transport links were expanded, but the railway line stayed the same.