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Content: In fact, the world’s biggest cities today are still located next to water, though transportation technology has allowed inland regions to be populated too. In the 1800s, the American West and other parts of the world saw settlements spring up along the newly built railroads, and today highways and roads form an even bigger factor. Transportation Routes
Rivers-early settlement relied on access to rivers to ship materials inland and is still used today to some extent. Railroads-the expansion of the rail system increased the movement of people and goods into inland areas that may not have access to rivers. Highways- the growth and improvements to the highways systems have allowed for transport of goods by large trucks across a region in a timely manner. Airplanes-the invention of air travel and development of larger planes has increase the ability to transport large amounts of goods quickly and also enables people to move  and relocate ith greater ease. Human Factors Part 4
The government’s land policies can also have a lasting effect on settlement patterns. Today many city governments enforce zoning rules, controlling the growth of settlements by allowing people to live in some areas but not others. Similarly, when the United States and Canada were expanding west across North America, they each instituted rules that allowed settlers to claim land for farms. Huge areas of land were divided into grids of square plots on official maps, resulting in a checkerboard of square fields, straight-line roads, county lines and state borders across much of the Great Plains.