CHAPTER – I INTRODUCTION AND RESEARCH DESIGN In India as well as in most developing countries, the excessive growth of population and the increased trend towards urbanization have led to many things such as haphazard growth of industries, unplanned housing and utility networks, conversion of precious agricultural and forest land into urban land etc. Urban land is one of the important resources provided to man by which necessary human activities are performed. An accurate and uptodate information about the urban land is indispensable for scientific planning and management of urban resources of an area taking into consideration the potentials and the constraints to the environment. The rational planning and management of urban land is possible through the regular survey of the land use which helps in delineating land suitable for various activities. IMPORTANCE OF THE PROBLEM An important feature of urbanization in India is the dualism of urban growth decelerating at macro level. But in Class I cities it is growing. An analysis of the distribution of urban population across size categories reveals that the process of urbanization in India has been large city oriented. This is manifested in a high per centage of urban population being concentrated in 1 class I cities, which has gone up systematically over the decades in the last century. The massive increase in the per centage share of urban population in class I cities from 26.0 in 1901 to 68.7 in 2001 has often been attributed to faster growth of large cities, without taking into consideration the increase in the number of these cities. Undoubtedly, the faster demographic growth is an important factor responsible for making the urban structure top-heavy. From the reports of growth rates for different categories of towns during 1970s and subsequent decades, one can note that the Class I cities have experienced a distinctly higher growth rate than lower order towns except those in Class VI. Indeed, the latter do not fall in line with the general pattern of urban growth in other size categories as they are governed by factors exogenous to the regional economy. The less developed countries (LDCs) are experiencing a process of rapid urbanisation. The fraction of population living in urban areas in these countries increased from 17 to 37 per cent between 1950s and 1990s and it was expected to surpass the 50 per centage mark before 2020. By that time, 77 per cent of the population in the more developed countries is expected to be urban, still close to the 1990 figure of 73 per cent. 2 The rates of urbanisation in the LDCs are, however, not exceptionally high by historical standards. The ratio of urban to total population in the LDCs increased from 17 to 26 per cent over the 25-year period from 1950 to 1975. This is the same increase experienced by the more developed countries over the last quarter of the nineteenth century. While the per centage of urban population in the LDCs is getting closer to that of the more developed countries, the pattern and size of urban agglomerations are diverging from what can be observed in the more developed regions, and particularly in European countries. During the previous decades, European urban systems become increasingly balanced, in the sense that the share of population living in their largest cities had fallen. The urban sectors of LDCs have instead been absorbed by their largest cities. In their classic study, calculate several measures of urban primacy for the city size distributions of 44 countries (the exponents of Pareto distributions, and also the ratio of each country's largest city to the sum of the population of the top five or the top 50 cities). They then investigate several factors to which urban primacy may be related, and show that countries that are less developed, have lower transport costs, or export a 3 smaller fraction of their Gross National Product (GNP) tend to have a larger degree of primacy.1 1.2. WORLD LEVEL URBANISATION On achieving the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the international community’s unprecedented agreement on targets towards the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, will depend to a large extent on how well the government of developing countries manage their cities. Cities are currently home to nearly half of the world’s population and over the next 30 years, most of the two-billion increase in global population is expected to occupy the urban areas in the developing world. This represents a significant departure from the spatial distribution of population growth in the developing world that occurred over the past 30 years, which was much more evenly divided between urban and rural areas. The level of world urbanization today and the number and size of the world’s largest cities are unprecedented. At the beginning of the twentieth century, just 16 cities in the world of which the vast majority situated in advanced industrial countries contained a million people each or more. Today, almost 400 cities contain a million people each or more, and about 1 United Nations:(2009) World urbanization prospects: the 2003 revision Data tables and highlights. New York: United Nations. 4 seventy per cent of them are found to be in the developing world. By 2007, for the first time in human history, more people in the world were living in cities and towns than in rural areas and by 2017 the developing world is likely to become more urban in character than rural.2 If well managed, cities can offer important opportunities for economic and social development. Cities have always been focal points for economic growth, innovation, and employment. Indeed, many cities grow out of some natural advantage in transport and raw material supply. Cities, particularly capital cities, are where the vast majority of modern productive activities are concentrated in the developing world and where the vast majority of paid employment opportunities are located. Cities are also centres of modern living, where female labour force participation is the greatest and where indicators of general health and wellbeing, literacy, women’s status, and social mobility are typically the highest. Finally, cities are also important social and cultural centres that house museums, art galleries, film industries, theaters, fashion houses, and other important cultural centres.3 2 United Nations: (2004) human settlements programme (UN-HABITAT). The state of the world’s cities 2004/2005: globalization and urban culture. Nairobi/London: UN-HABITAT/Earthscan; 2004. 3 United Nations human settlements programme (UN-HABITAT) : (2003). The challenge of slums: global report on human settlements. London: Earth scan. 5 High population density may also be good for minimizing the effect of man on local eco - systems. High population density typically implies lower per capita cost of providing infrastructure and basic services. Despite the high rates of urban poverty that are found in many cities, urban residents, on an average, enjoy better access to education and health care, as well as other basic public services such as electricity, water, and sanitation than the people in rural areas.4 Nevertheless, as cities develop, managing them becomes increasingly complex. The speed and sheer scale of the urban transformation of the developing world presents formidable challenges. Particular concerns are the risks to the immediate and surrounding environment, to natural resources, to health conditions, to social cohesion, and to individual rights. For many observers, however, the greatest concern is surely the massive increase in the numbers of the urban poor. Available data suggest that in a large number of the world’s poorest countries, the proportion of urban poor is increasing faster than the overall rate of urban population growth.5 An estimated 72 per cent of the urban population of Africa now live in slums. The proportions are 43 per cent for Asia and the Pacific, 32 per cent for Latin America, and 4 United Nations: (1980) Patterns of urban and rural population growth. New York: United Nations. 5 United Nations: (2001) World urbanization prospects: the 1999 revision. New York: United Nations. 6 30 per cent for the Middle East and Northern Africa. Rapid urban growth throughout the developing world has seriously outstripped the capacity of most cities to provide adequate basic services for their citizens. Yet each year city attracts new migrants who, together with the increasing native population, expand the number of squatter settlements and shanty towns, exacerbating the problems of urban congestion and sprawl and hampering local authorities’ attempts to improve basic infrastructure and deliver essential services.6 To deal with these challenges will, at a minimum, require accurate projections of future urban growth, which in turn must be based on both a solid foundation of high-quality statistics and a good understanding of the likely patterns and trends of urban change. But this is not an easy task. There are enormous difficulties in obtaining reliable data on urban populations and quite major errors have been made in the past with respect to projections of some of the world’s largest cities. Take for example, the case of Mexico City. In 1980, demographers predicted that Mexico City would contain over 31 million people by the year 2000. But the actual population of Mexico City in the year 2000 turned out to be only 19 million, a massive number but 6 Amitabh Kundu: (2009). Trends and Patterns of Urbanisation and their Economic Implications, working papers on urbanisation. 7 nowhere near the 1980 projection. Or consider for a moment, the case of Lagos, Nigeria: in 1980, the best data available led demographers to believe that the population of Lagos was around million. At that time, they forecast that the city would grow to around 4.5 million by the year 2000.7 World urbanization: current estimates and future projections World population has grown exponentially in the 20th century from around 1.6 billion in 1900 to around 6.1 billion today, with each additional billion people being added more rapidly than the last.