Urbanization: Trend and Pattern of Urbanisation

• Urbanisation is the process by which a growing share of a population comes to live in towns and cities, and by which settlements change from agricultural to non-agricultural in function, form and way of life.
• It is a structural transformation of economy, society and landscape, not only a demographic change. It brings a shift from primary to secondary and tertiary work, new land uses and built forms, and denser economic links between places.
• The world became urban-majority in 2007 and was 57.8% urban in 2025. India was 31.1% urban at Census 2011 and an estimated 35.7% in 2025.

Urbanisation: Meaning and Measurement

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Meaning

• Three senses of the term:
  • Demographic: a rise in the proportion of people living in urban places.
    • Kingsley Davis (1965) separated this from urban growth, the rise in the absolute urban population. A country can have rapid urban growth with little urbanisation if rural numbers grow as fast.
  • Structural: the shift of work and capital from farms to factories and offices. Cities become the foci of production, exchange and agglomeration economies.
  • Behavioural: the spread of urbanism, the urban way of life (Louis Wirth, 1938): secondary contacts, individualism, nuclear families and new values. These diffuse even into villages.
• The problems of urbanisation arise where demographic urbanisation runs ahead of structural change and city capacity.

Defining Urban Places in India

• Census 2011 treats as urban:
  • Statutory towns: places with a municipality, corporation, cantonment board or notified town area committee.
  • Census towns: places with at least 5,000 people, a density of 400 persons per km² and 75% of male main workers in non-agricultural work.
• The census groups towns into six size classes, the basis of India’s hierarchy of urban settlements: Class I (1 lakh people or more, the growth poles of the system), II (50,000–99,999), III (20,000–49,999), IV (10,000–19,999), V (5,000–9,999) and Class VI (fewer than 5,000).
• Other criticisms of the tests:
  • R. Ramachandran would count any place with 50% or more non-farm workers as urban and raise the density test to about 1,000 per km².
  • At least a quarter of census towns still have agriculture as the main activity.
  • Rigid tests make towns come and go. Of 4,029 towns in 1981, 93 were declassified and 103 merged by 1991, while 856 new ones (277 statutory, 579 census) were added.
• The density test of 400 per km² is widely criticised as too low for India, one of several weaknesses in the classification of settlements.
• Towns are also grouped by dominant function:
  • Industrial: Jamshedpur, Bhilai.
  • Commercial: Mumbai, Ahmedabad.
  • Administrative: New Delhi, Chandigarh.
  • Religious: Varanasi, Tirupati.
  • Tourist: Shimla, Panaji.
  • Residential or suburban: peri-urban towns around metros.
  • Statistical methods of functional classification of towns replace such judgement with workforce shares.

Measures of Urbanisation

• The last two measures describe the city-size system through the primate city and rank-size rule.

Components of Urban Growth

• Natural increase: urban births minus deaths.
• Net rural–urban migration: driven by push (small holdings, agrarian distress) and pull (jobs, wages, services).
• Reclassification: villages that cross the urban tests become towns.
• Boundary expansion: city limits absorb surrounding villages, as in sprawl.
• India, 2001–11:
  • Natural increase gave about 44% of urban growth.
  • New census towns gave about 30%.
  • Net migration and boundary changes gave the rest. Net rural–urban migration added about 19 million people.
  • Migration’s share is higher in the large metropolitan cities, whose fertility is near or below replacement.

Factors of Urbanisation

Stages and Models of Urbanisation

Northam’s Urbanisation Curve

• Ray M. Northam (1975) showed that the urban share of a country, plotted over time, follows an S-shaped (logistic) curve in three stages:
  • Initial stage (below about 25% urban):
    • An agrarian economy with slow growth.
    • Scattered villages, and small market and administrative towns.
  • Acceleration stage (about 25–70%):
    • Industrial take-off and large-scale rural–urban migration.
    • The urban share climbs fast, and primate cities and slums often emerge.
  • Terminal stage (above about 70%):
    • A mature, service economy in which the curve flattens, near 75–90%.
    • The urban share may dip as people move to suburbs and small towns.
• Real trajectories (UN WUP 2025):
  • The UK passed the terminal stage before 1950. Its urban share actually fell from 80% (1950) to 77% (1971).
  • Japan climbed from 37% to 76% in 1950–75. Brazil climbed from 37% (1950) to 81% (2000).
  • China is in rapid acceleration: 36% in 2000 and 66% in 2025.
  • India has been in a slow acceleration since about 1990: 26% in 1991 and 36% in 2025.
  • Ethiopia and Niger are still in the initial stage.
• Critique:
  • The model generalises the European path. In many developing countries the acceleration stage comes without industrialisation.
  • The ceiling depends on how “urban” is defined.
  • Stages are not inevitable. Some countries stall, such as Sri Lanka at about 20%.

The Urban Development Cycle

• Leo van den Berg and colleagues (1982) traced how growth shifts between the core city and its ring (suburbs and commuter belt) over four stages.
• The stages extend the terminal part of the curve.

Counter-urbanisation

• Brian J. L. Berry (1976) coined counter-urbanisation for the movement of people and jobs from large cities to small towns and rural areas. It is a deconcentration of population.
• Calvin Beale documented it in the USA as the “non-metropolitan turnaround” of the 1970s. Non-metropolitan counties grew faster than metropolitan ones for the first time.
• Factors:
  • Transport and communication: cars, motorways, commuter rail and, now, telecommuting and remote work.
  • Push from big cities: congestion, high land prices and rent, crime, pollution, poor schools.
  • Pull of the countryside: space, cheaper housing, amenity landscapes and a “rural idyll”.
  • Life cycle: retirement migration, as to the English south coast or Florida, and families with children.
  • Economic restructuring: deindustrialisation of old cores, and the relocation of factories and back offices to cheaper small towns.
  • Policy: new and expanded towns, green belts and regional development policy, as in Britain’s new towns after 1946.
• Effects:
  • Inner-city decline and a falling tax base.
  • Rising house prices and the gentrification of villages.
  • Long commutes, and the loss of rural character.
• Re-urbanisation followed from the 1990s. Young professionals, migrants and regeneration projects brought people back to inner cities.
• In India:
  • Spread to the fringe is peri-urbanisation and sprawl, not true counter-urbanisation. The metropolis keeps growing.
  • The 2020 COVID-19 lockdown sent millions of migrants back to villages, but most returned.
  • The metropolis spreads by urban sprawl into its rural–urban fringe.

Urbanisation in the Developing World

• R. P. Misra treated the rural–urban process in India as a staged absorption of villages into the urban system.
  • He worked this out with K. V. Sundaram and V. L. S. Prakasa Rao (1974).
  • The stages are: closed subsistence villages; periodic markets; central villages and service centres; and growth points, growth centres and growth poles.
  • In the last stage, villages are integrated into the urban field through the fringe.
  • The scheme underpinned India’s growth-centre approach to regional planning.

Global Trend of Urbanisation

Growth since 1950

• The world’s urban population rose from 0.72 billion (29%) in 1950 to 2.89 billion (47%) in 2000 and 4.76 billion (57.8%) in 2025.
• It is projected to reach 6.5 billion (67%) by 2050 (UN WUP 2025).
• The rate of urban growth is falling:
  • About 3.0% a year in 1950–75, 2.5% in 1975–2000 and 2.0% in 2000–25.
  • About 1.2% projected for 2025–50.
  • The reasons are saturation in the North, falling fertility and slower migration.
• Absolute increases stay very large. About 1.9 billion urban people were added in 2000–25, almost all of them in Asia and Africa.
• Phases:
  • 1950–1980: rapid urban expansion with industrialisation and migration. Latin America urbanised fastest.
  • 1980–2000: continued growth, led by services, and the rise of Asian mega-urban regions.
  • Since 2000: slower rates. Shrinking cities appear in Japan, Eastern Europe and China, while Africa and South Asia carry most of the growth.
• Drivers:
  • Industrialisation and diversification.
  • Global trade and services.
  • Transport and communication.
  • Agrarian stagnation in the South.
  • The productivity advantages of agglomeration.
• The older UN-based series, with higher projections than the 2025 revision:

• On this series the world goes from 34% to about 56% in 1960–2020, and annual urban growth falls from 2.84% (1960–70) to 1.99%. It points to about 60% by 2030 and 68–70% by 2050.
• India nearly doubles from 17.9% to about 35%, with urban growth near 2.5–3% a year. It points to over 40% by 2030 and over 50% by 2050. The 2025 revision lowers these to 37% and 43%.

Regional Shifts after 1950

• The urban world has moved south and east.
  • Europe and Northern America held 54% of the world’s urban people in 1950.
  • Asia and Africa held 70% in 2025 and will hold 75% by 2050.
  • Asia’s share rose from 30% to 54%, and Africa’s from 5% to 15%. Africa’s is projected at 23% by 2050.
• Character of the process by region:
  • Europe, Northern America, Japan:
    • Mature levels (75–92%) and slow growth.
    • Suburbanisation, counter-urbanisation and later re-urbanisation.
    • Shrinking cities such as Detroit, Leipzig and many Japanese towns.
  • Latin America:
    • Early, fast urbanisation (42% in 1950 to 82% in 2025) with high primacy in Buenos Aires, Lima and Mexico City.
    • Large favelas and barriadas.
  • Asia:
    • The largest absolute growth, and mega-urban regions in the Pearl River Delta, Jakarta and Delhi.
    • Desakota belts.
    • Contrasts from Japan’s 92% to Sri Lanka’s 20%.
  • Africa:
    • The fastest growth and the lowest level (46%).
    • Urbanisation largely without industrialisation.
    • 53.6% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s urban people live in slums.

Pattern of Urbanisation

• The level of urbanisation is highly uneven, with a core–periphery pattern:
  • High: Northern America, Latin America, Europe, Australia and the Gulf.
  • Moderate: East and South-East Asia.
  • Low: South Asia and most of Sub-Saharan Africa.
  • By continent, about 2020:
    • Northern America, about 83%: early industry, high incomes, an advanced service economy, near saturation, metropolitan corridors.
    • Latin America and the Caribbean, about 82%: high levels at lower incomes, through primacy and migration, as in Brazil and Mexico.
    • Europe, about 75%: a mature, balanced city hierarchy, planned growth and strong regional networks.
    • Oceania, about 68%: high in Australia and New Zealand, concentrated in coastal cities.
    • Asia, about 51%: high in Japan, South Korea and the Gulf; moderate in China and Indonesia; low in India and Afghanistan.
    • Africa, about 44%: an agrarian economy, a low industrial base and poor infrastructure hold it lowest, yet it grows fastest.
  • The pattern mirrors the rural–urban distribution of population by continent and country.
• Country variation among populous countries (2025):
  • Very high: Brazil 88%, Mexico 80%, USA 80%, Japan 92%.
  • Moderate: China 66%, Nigeria 64%, Indonesia 59%.
  • Low: Pakistan 40%, India 36%, Bangladesh 33%, Ethiopia 24%.
  • An earlier reckoning, kept for comparison: Brazil 87.6%, Mexico 83.8%, USA 82.8%, China 60%, Indonesia 56%, Bangladesh 39%, India and Pakistan 35%.
• Extremes:
  • City-states such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Monaco and Kuwait, with Qatar close behind, are 100% urban, because they are small and have no rural hinterland.
  • Very low levels, about 20% or less, occur in Papua New Guinea, Niger, Malawi and Sri Lanka.
• Determinants of the pattern:
  • Economic: the level of industrialisation and services.
  • Historical: early industrial revolution in Europe; colonial port-and-capital networks in Latin America, Africa and South Asia.
  • Demographic: the stage of the demographic transition and the intensity of migration.
  • Physical: climate, relief and water.
  • Institutional: definitions, land policy and planning.
• The Degree of Urbanisation (WUP 2025) counts 45% of the world in cities, 36% in towns and 19% in rural areas.
  • On this measure India is 40% city and 44% town.
  • The world is more urban than national definitions suggest, and the link between urbanisation and income is weaker.

Megacities

• Megacities are cities of 10 million or more (UN).
• Under the harmonised WUP 2025 definition, megacities quadrupled from 8 in 1975 to 33 in 2025 and will number 37 by 2050.
  • 19 are in Asia, 5 in Latin America, 4 in Africa, 3 in Europe and 2 in Northern America.
  • India has five: New Delhi (30 million), Kolkata (22.5 million), Mumbai (20 million), Bengaluru (13 million) and Chennai (11 million).
• The largest cities in 2025 were:
  • Jakarta (42 million), Dhaka (37 million), Tokyo (33 million) and New Delhi (30 million).
  • Then Shanghai, Guangzhou, Cairo, Manila, Kolkata and Seoul.
  • Cairo is the only one of the ten outside Asia.
• Older lists ranked Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai, São Paulo, Mexico City, Cairo, Dhaka, Mumbai, Beijing and Osaka as the top ten, seven of them in Asia.
• Tokyo is shrinking and may fall to seventh by 2050. Dhaka is projected to become the largest city.
• Addis Ababa, Dar es Salaam, Hajipur (in the Patna region) and Kuala Lumpur will cross 10 million by 2050.
• Definitions change rankings. On national city limits, Jakarta had only about 12 million and Tokyo led. A density-based definition captures the whole contiguous built-up area.
• Role in the global economy and culture:
  • John Friedmann (1986) called the leading cities world cities. Saskia Sassen (1991) called them global cities: command points of finance, corporate headquarters, producer services, media and culture. Examples are New York, London and Tokyo.
  • Many megacities of the South are large but not global. Their size comes from migration and natural increase, not from command functions.
• Small and medium cities matter more than their profile suggests:
  • 96% of the world’s 12,000 cities have under 1 million people.
  • Together they house more people than the megacities and are growing faster, especially in Africa and Asia.

Emerging Trends

• Urban growth has shifted from the developed to the developing world, and from large to small and medium cities.
• Urban corridors and mega-regions are growing, along with peri-urban belts, conurbations and metropolitan regions.
• Informal urbanisation: 1.12 billion people lived in slums in 2022, and 1.16 billion (24.8% of urban residents) in 2024.
• Shrinking cities in ageing countries.
• An emphasis on sustainable, resilient and smart urban development (SDG 11).

Urbanisation in India

Historical Evolution

• Indus urbanisation: the planned cities of the mature Harappan phase (c. 2600–1900 BCE), such as Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Lothal, Kalibangan and Dholavira.
• Second urbanisation from about the 6th century BCE: mahajanapada capitals and trade towns such as Pataliputra, Varanasi, Ujjain and Kaushambi, and later the southern ports.
• Medieval urbanisation under the Sultanate, Mughal and regional kingdoms: Delhi, Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Vijayanagara, Golconda–Hyderabad and Ahmedabad.
• Before the first census: about 1800 India had 16 cities of a lakh or more, some 1,500 towns and an urban share near 11%. The share was 8.7% in 1872 and 9.3% in 1881. Most of the 19th century brought stagnation, and only the presidency ports grew strongly.
• Colonial period: a national settlement system reorganised for export:
  • Port cities headed the system: Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai.
  • Railways linked the interior to the ports, so railway junctions grew.
  • Cantonments, civil lines and hill stations were added: Shimla, Darjeeling, Ooty.
  • Many pre-colonial inland centres declined.
  • The urban share stayed near 10–12% between 1901 and 1931.
• Post-Independence:
  • Planned capitals: Chandigarh, Bhubaneswar, Gandhinagar.
  • Steel and industrial towns: Bhilai, Rourkela, Durgapur, Bokaro.
  • Refugee towns: Faridabad, one of 14 new towns, with model-town colonies at 19 places in Punjab, Haryana and Delhi.
  • Satellite and new towns: Navi Mumbai, Noida.
  • Growth was then led by metropolitan services after 1991.

Trend, 1901–2011

• Three phases:
  • Slow growth (to 1931):
    • Famines, plague and epidemics kept urban mortality high.
    • The share fell from 10.8% (1901) to 10.3% (1911) after plague drove people out of towns.
  • Moderate growth (1931–61):
    • War-time industry and Partition refugees swelled the cities.
    • The decadal urban growth of 1941–51 was 41%.
    • The share rose only 0.7 points in 1951–61, because a stricter definition in 1961 declassified hundreds of small towns. The count fell from 3,035 to 2,657, which makes 1951–61 an inactive decade.
  • Rapid growth (1961–2011):
    • The urban population rose almost fivefold to 377 million.
    • Urban growth peaked at 46.1% in 1971–81 and then slowed.
    • It picked up again in 2001–11 as census towns jumped from 1,362 to 3,892.
• Million-plus cities rose from 1 (Kolkata) in 1901 to 5 in 1951, 12 in 1981, 35 in 2001 and 52 in 2011 (final tables; 53 provisional). They held about 42.3% of urban people in 2011.

• Metropolitanisation is the growth of big centres on an industrial and tertiary base, with a sprawling built-up area that takes in nearby villages and towns.
  • V. L. S. Prakasa Rao (1983) stressed its large flows of people, goods, services and information.
  • R. Ramachandran (1995) saw it as a product of administrative, political and economic centralisation at national and State capitals, and of a more integrated economy.
  • It is mainly a post-Independence process. Mumbai joined Kolkata in 1911. Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad followed by 1951; Ahmedabad and Bengaluru by 1961; Kanpur and Pune by 1971; Lucknow, Nagpur and Jaipur by 1981.
  • Migration is its chief mechanism, yet natural increase gave about 60% of urban growth in 1981–91. The sudden jump of 1951 came from Partition refugees.
  • In 2001–11 Kolkata and Mumbai grew slowest among large metros. Malappuram, Thrissur, Kannur, Kollam, Kozhikode, Thiruvananthapuram, Ghaziabad, Vasai-Virar, Dhanbad, Surat and Raipur grew fastest.
  • One projection expects 87 metropolitan cities with 255 million people by 2039.
• Since 2011:
  • No census count yet. Enumeration has a reference date of 1 March 2027.
  • UN WUP 2025 estimates India at 35.7% urban (522 million): 37% in 2030 and 43% in 2050.
  • On the Degree of Urbanisation, 84% of Indians already live in cities or towns.

Spatial Pattern

• High levels: Goa, Mizoram, Tamil Nadu, Keralam (Kerala) and Maharashtra, together with Delhi and Chandigarh.
• Low levels: Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Assam, Odisha and Meghalaya.
• Levels in 2011 (%):
  • States: Goa 62.2, Mizoram 52.1, Tamil Nadu 48.4, Keralam 47.7, Maharashtra 45.2, Gujarat 42.6, Karnataka 38.7, Punjab 37.5.
  • Lowest States: Himachal Pradesh 10.0, Bihar 11.3, Assam 14.1, Odisha 16.7.
  • UTs: Delhi 97.5, Chandigarh 97.3, Lakshadweep 78.1, Daman and Diu 75.2, Puducherry 68.3, Dadra and Nagar Haveli 46.7, Andaman and Nicobar 37.7.
• Numbers differ from levels:
  • Maharashtra (50.8 million), Uttar Pradesh (44.5), Tamil Nadu (34.9), West Bengal (29.1) and undivided Andhra Pradesh (about 28) hold more than half of urban India.
  • Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Bihar and Rajasthan hold about another quarter.
  • Uttar Pradesh is near the top in numbers though only 22.3% urban.
• Towns by State, 2011:
  • Tamil Nadu 1,097 (over 13% of the total), Uttar Pradesh 915, West Bengal 909, Maharashtra 535 and Keralam 520: more than half of all towns. Among small States, Goa has 70 and Sikkim 9.
  • Towns rose by 2,772 net in 2001–11: 242 statutory and 2,530 census.
  • New census towns were most numerous in West Bengal (537), Keralam (362), Tamil Nadu (272) and Uttar Pradesh (208).
  • On the eve of the census 47 statutory towns were denotified and 208 census towns declassified, 27 each in Gujarat and Jharkhand and 24 in Andhra Pradesh.
• An older 2021 estimate put Keralam above 55%, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Telangana and Tamil Nadu at 45–55%, and Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh, Assam and Meghalaya below 25%.
• Fastest urban growth in 2001–11:
  • Keralam (93%) and Sikkim, through new census towns and rural-to-urban reclassification.
  • The small UTs of Dadra and Nagar Haveli (216.7%) and Daman and Diu (218.4%), through industrial in-migration.
  • All India: urban 31.8% against rural 12.2%.
  • Other high rates: Sikkim 153.4 (rural −5.2), Tripura 76.1, Nagaland 67.4 (rural −14.6), Haryana 44.3, Manipur 42.7, Uttarakhand 41.9, Chhattisgarh 41.8, and Lakshadweep 86.6. Keralam’s rural population fell by 26%.
• Slowest urban growth: Himachal Pradesh (15.6%) and Andaman and Nicobar (16.6%). Delhi (26.6%) and Chandigarh (26.9%) were also below the national rate.

Distinctive Features of Indian Urbanisation

• Slow and gradual: one of the least urbanised large countries by its own definition, yet the second-largest urban population in the world after China.
  • R. Ramachandran (1995) argued that India is as much a land of towns as of villages, with over 12,000 settlements of 5,000 or more.
• Top-heavy: Class I towns hold about 70% of urban people.
  • Metropolitanisation: three UAs above 14 million in 2011, Greater Mumbai (18.4 million), Delhi (16.3 million) and Kolkata (14.1 million).
  • Small towns stagnate.
• Natural increase dominates urban growth. The migration-driven view fits the big metros better than the country.
• Migration-led informality:
  • Urban growth has outpaced industrial jobs, so a large informal sector and slums have grown. About 17% of urban people lived in slums in 2011.
  • Male-selective migration lowers the urban sex ratio: 929 against 949 in rural areas.
• Hidden or subaltern urbanisation: thousands of census towns are urban in character but governed as villages.
• Regional imbalance: an urban west and south against a rural Ganga plain, east and north-east.
• Peri-urbanisation around metros, along with urban corridors such as Delhi–Mumbai and Bengaluru–Chennai.