Quest Hubs?

Maybe I read information wrong, but I could have sworn Yoshida said we were getting quest hubs, I think it was in a post with early development pictures of those new settlements. Now, I've been to some of these settlements and they seem incredibly lacking...

Are they chain quests or something? I've picked up a few, but it definitely doesn't feel anything like a "quest hub" or are these settlements not the quest hubs that Yoshida was talking about? I'm kind of surprised this hasn't been brought up, perhaps no one cares about quests when they only give you 500 xp a pop ;\