Urbanization in India

Rapid urbanisation has caused a variety of problems, including transport congestion, lack of sufficient homes and living conditions, sanitary and health care issues, and crime. For all these problems, city planners have attempted potential solutions, each with varying degrees of success. Cities including London, Manila and Mumbai have several of the aforementioned problems, and have each tried their own potential solutions. This essay will discuss how successful these schemes have been in resolving these issues.

Over the past several decades, mixed-use development has taken centre stage in the urban planning& real estate development worlds. Whether it is the New Urbanism, Smart Growth, the Compact City, or any other movement relating to the improvement of the built environment, mixing land uses is a ubiquitous component of the underlying visions& ideals. Moreover, the concept is being embraced more by private sectors,& by each of the major parties involved in the real estate development process, the end users who demand space; the developers, investors,& financial institutions that supply space;& the planners& policy makers that regulate space.

Development: As the population grows there is need for urban development which could be intrusive on the

“Out of the Mountains” predicts that these large urban centers will become the equivalent to the city-states of antiquity (Kilcullen 2013). Kilcullen (2013) identifies the contemporary global theatre as one which is experiencing rabid urban growth, and predicts that conflict will also steadily urbanize over time. When cities grow rapidly, they often do so without the proper planning and design that efficient communities require to function (Kilcullen 2013). Kilcullen’s (2013) argument citing urbanization as a factor in future environments is based around the assumption that local municipalities will fail to institute adequate planning measures to match population growth. He provides the example of the attacks on Mumbai as proof that rapidly urbanized areas foster irregular

Urbanization has been constant over the last few hundred years. It continues even today and will continue with the constant increase in world population. Urbanization affects all levels of society and an accommodating urban environment is a necessity. But as humans we haven’t really been good at it. The process of urbanization can vary by country. Within the urban communities the political economy determines the existence of social classes.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth century urban populations grew rapidly through migration from rural areas to find new jobs in the cities created by the industrial revolution, which led to 6,5 million inhabitants in London. In the twentieth century cities kept growing and in the 1950’s around thirty percent of world’s population was urban. The first mega city in the world emerged, as New York City broke the boundary of ten million inhabitants around 1930 (Wendell Cox Consultancy, 2005). In 1990 there were ten megacities that were home to 153 million people which is less than seven percent of the global urban population. In 2014 the amount of megacities has almost tripled to 28 with a population of 453 million people, which account for twelve percent of the global urban population. The total urban population in 2014 was 54 percent (UN, 2014). These numbers can be related to the second important event,

The level and growth of urbanization differ considerably by region. Among different countries, Latin American countries have the highest portion of the people that live in the country living in urban areas. But the south and the east of Asia are the most likely to have the most urbanized area over the next 30 years. Almost all of future world population growth will be in towns and cities. Urbanization is a powerful force of human nature because as they move, the climate shifts with them. The more humans in one area make more pollution in that one area because of all the Homo sapiens living there. “In 1800 only about 2 percent of the world's population lived in urban areas. Until a century ago, urban areas were some of the unhealthiest places for people to live. The increased density of populations in urban areas led to the rapid spread of infectious diseases. Consequently, death rates in urban areas historically were higher than in rural areas. The only way urban areas maintained their existence until recently was by the continual in-migration of rural people.”(prb.org,

Since China is a developing country with a large population, the scale of urbanization is expanding, and urban structure becomes increasingly complex and the speed of urbanization is accelerating (Huang & Duan, 2004) since China’s reform and opening up. Rapid urbanization is the main driving force of urban land growth (Li et al, 2015). Moreover, now and in the next few decades, the spatial expansion of construction land is becoming the main feature of land-use changing (Yi, 2015). The study of the spatial-temporal characteristics of construction land expansion will further deepen understanding the nature of the urbanization (Lin, 2007).

The significant increase of the world’s urban population has lead to a crisis of unprecedented enormity in urban housing provision. All these new urban citisens need to be provided with shelter, employment and with basic services. The limited capacity of most urban economies in developing countries, such as Brazil, are unable to meet more than a reduced part of these needs, so that most of the employment and housing supply are found in the ‘informal’ sector, where around 67% of the urban population in developing countries are currently living and working (Habitat III Issue Papers - Informal Settlements 2015).

The twenty-first century is the moment from which, for the fist time in history, there will be more people living in cities then in the countryside. The percentage of urban population started to increase in the 19th century, at the end of which only 3% of the world population lived in cities. In slightly more then a century there was an impressive growth in both relative and absolute terms and the trends for 2030 forecast that 5 out 8 billion people will be urban inhabitants. It is important to understand that, based on how we deal with this change; it can be either a powerful mean to improve life quality or the reason to cause a situation of deep urban conflicts. The rapid growth of the city can be a risk for its poorest

The Sir George Birdwood Memorial Lecture by Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew talked about the construction of modern India. They explain one of the most important parts of their Five-Year Plan that relates to housing and architecture; besides, the division of the city in sectors and the implementation of roads for providing security access to each sector, especially for the slum places was taken into consideration. In addition, they talk about housing indicating the way they manage to build the respective houses and public places such as hospitals, schools, shops and others.

The country’s population pyramid is anticipated to bulge across the 15-59 age groups over the next decade. This demographic advantage is predicted to last only until 2040. A World Bank report states that India is one of the few countries where working population continues to grow till 2050 [7]. With an annual addition of 9.25 million jobs per year, over 37 million jobs are expected to be created from 2012-13 through 2016-17 [8].

India’s population extends to 32.7 percent urban (68 percent rural) with an average annual change of 2.38%, providing market opportunity. Urban agglomeration is found in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Kolkata (formally spelled Calcutta).

For example, more than 1 million people were living in Tokyo, the capital of Japan, as early as 1700. (Pacione) Also, according to the United Nations (1995) World Urbanization, almost all the first 15th largest urban agglomerations were found in First World while the first three largest urban agglomerations were New York, London and Tokyo and the 15th was Berlin in Germant, which is still in First World. Only two in fifteen were found in China – Beijing and Shanghai. However, when the United Nations released the report about the urban agglomerations in the world again in 2009, the ranking has been totally different: the largest cities in the world is still in First World – Tokyo, but the second has been Delhi in India while the third Sao Paulo in Brazil. Only four in the first 15th largest cities are found in First World. (UN Urban Agglomerations 2009) This indicates that Third World now is experiencing the phrase of urbanization while the First World has gone into another phrase – suburbanization or even counterurbanization.

Rapid urbanization in developing countries like India has resulted in a significant increase of the urban population within the country. The historic label of ‘the country of villages’ defies the current state of Modern India. Growing cities besides expanding the economic base have also contributed towards the degenerative decay of the urban core. Increasing unemployment, pressure on infrastructure, creation of slums in the urban core of cities and environmental degradation are a few results of the unplanned haphazard urbanization.