The evolution of settlement in Zimbabwe has been influenced by political, administrative and economic factors during both the colonial and postcolonial periods. Pre-colonial Zimbabwe was predominantly agrarian with scattered nuclear and village settlements spread across the country. The scattered settlements were largely located to service an agricultural economy with limited trade and manufacturing, except for limited barter of goods and home manufacture of implements such as hoes and spears. The levels of specialisation were few and therefore the settlements had limited physical and social infrastructure. Except for the Great Zimbabwe monument and other relics of early pre-colonial settlements, there is no evidence of urban development until the colonial period. The settlement system tended to be semi-permanent as the population practised shifting cultivation.

During the early period of colonialism, up to approximately 1890, new settlements were established largely to serve as military and administrative centres, for example. Fort Salisbury, Fort Charter and Fort Victoria. These settlements were part and parcel of the colonisation process. After the European conquest at the end of the nineteenth century, new permanent forms of settlement were developed, together with the establishment of physical infrastructure linking them: railways, roads, telegraph. This process was vital to the establishment of the spatial system which exists in Zimbabwe today. The process was elaborated through a massive process of land alienation which effectively divided the country into European and African areas through the Land Apportionment Act of 1930 and the Land Husbandry Act of 1952.

By the end of the Second World War, Zimbabwe had experienced a rapid process of urbanisation and industrialisation, which effectively consolidated the settlement system. The main urban settlements benefited from significant infrastructure investment from government through the establishment of all the major parastatal and utility companies. Indeed by the beginning of the 1960s, Zimbabwe had a relatively well-developed spatial system despite the prevailing racial segregation which created racial and economic imbalances in terms of overall development.

The colonial inheritance in 1980 was therefore clearly much more significant than some other African countries had inherited in the 1960s. There was a strong settler European imprint which has been difficult to restructure.