To further extend on this, you need to disable the settlement feature in itself (if you are playing using the client directly hosted inside you can type /serverui and it will open the server graphical interface allowing you to navigate to Features settings where you can find the settlement option and disable it.) We will look at making this a templated option to pick on server creation but at this time of playtesting you need to manually edit the config yourself.
Settlements disabled have a few linked features with settlements though as dennis mentioned you still have the new type of restrictions with plots, the claims and their own set of properties however unlike settlements where you gain new ones from townships and further civic routes and groups these are still allocate on character levelup and specialty gains.