These people are called Bedouins (Bedawiyin - بدويين) from the Arabic word for desert, baadi (بادي).
bedouin
to live in arabias difficult desert enviorment people developed two main ways of life. some people lived a nomadic life moving from place to place. others lived a sedentary, or settled, life in towns.
The main difference between desert Arabs or Bedouin (بدوين) and settled Arabs or Fellahin (فلاحين) is that the lifestyle differed. Bedouins were nomadic people who were primarily pastoralists (people who raise animals). Bedouins would typically herd sheep and goats and migrate between various regions to feed their flocks. By contrast, Fellahin were settled into small towns and cities and were typically farmers who planted and cultivated fields of crops. Because the Fellahin were centered in communities, they were often more religious and traditional than the Bedouin, who practiced more a folk and transportable religion.
what percent of the colonists lived in towns or cities in the 1700s
I think...
Chinese Immigrants
Towns
There are schools in the few cities and towns located in the Atacama Desert.
The premise of the question, namely that people viewed that it was better to live in the desert, was not a common view. Even in Arabia, most people lived near oases or the coastline with the actual desert being almost completely unpopulated. Most people preferred to live in cities and fertile towns because agriculture and pastoralism (herding sheep and goats) were much easier to maintain in cities and fertile towns.
Washington, DC, Springfield, IL and New Salem, IL were the towns where Lincoln lived.
Villages or Towns Jews lived in during the holocaust
Only in Cities and towns would one find food markets in the Atacama Desert.