Dynamics of an Evolving City-Region in the Developing World: The National Capital Region of Delhi Revisited

Abstract

While the differential growth patterns of urban peripheral settlements around large cities continue to hold an important place in the urban research agenda, examination of regional urban systems from a theoretical perspective has received much less attention in developing countries. Based on demographic data of 1991–2011, an analysis of settlements in the National Capital Region of Delhi, India, reveals mixed spatial forms in the periphery of the traditionally monocentric Delhi. Our observation raises questions such as whether a polycentric, poly-nodal configuration, or a combination thereof, is in the making in the immediate periphery of Delhi. This emerging scenario has potential planning implications and questions the applicability of the traditional ‘Eurocentric’ theories to the evolving urbanization phenomena in the developing world.

Notes

1. In this context, the plan mentioned six towns by name: Ghaziabad, Noida, Faridabad, Gurgaon, Bahadurgarh, and Kundli (the last only with an assigned or projected population for 2001).

2. Some villages with 4000 and above population size that met the other criteria were considered for identification as ‘census towns’ (see ‘Concepts and Definitions’, Census of India 2011, lix).

3. We excluded the three smallest classes below 20,000 population from our study in line with the recommendation of the National Commission on Urbanization (1988). Also, for a view that many urban centres at this level (‘quasi-urban’) do not meet the basic ‘functional and other’ characteristics of urban centres, see Bose (1994, 7).

4. The number of cities in the NCR outside the NCTD increased from 51 in 2001 to 65 in 2011. Sixty-two of the 65 centres are presented in Figure 2.

5. However, it is interesting to note that 10 of 11 centres within 20 km of the NCTD grew at a faster rate than the core, although the growth rates for 7 of these centres (5 of which were located in the 10–20 km zone) slowed down in the 2001–2011 decade. We were not able to find comparable data for one centre (Beta Hajipur).

6. We did not find comparable data for Beta Hajipur and Hodal.

7. Although helpful, primary centres forming counterweights in development axes do not need to grow fast to perform the function of a counterweight, but they should generate sufficient volumes of interaction between them and the core city to sustain secondary urban growth along the communication axes between them.

8. It should be noted that not all corridors were growing vigorously over the study period. Some, in fact, showed moderate growth, but as a group they have outperformed peripheral towns.