View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Hiroshima University Institutional Repository Journal of Urban and Regional Studies on ContemporaryCharacteristics India of Urban 6(2): 1–20 Centres (2020) and Urbanization in Uttarakhand The Center for Contemporary India Studies, Hiroshima University Article http://home.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/hindas/index.html Characteristics of Urban Centres and Urbanization in Uttarakhand B.R. PANT* and Raghubir CHAND** *Professor, Department of Geography, M. B. Government Post Graduate College Haldwani, Nainital, India-263139 **Professor, Department of Geography, D. S. B. Campus Kumaun University Nainital, India-263002 E-mail:
[email protected]*,
[email protected]** Abstract e pace of urbanization in Uttarakhand, particularly aer the 1980s, has been alarming, and thousands of people from rural areas are settling in nearby urban centres every year. Even aer the creation of the state, the growth of the towns in the plain areas is many times higher than the growth of hilly towns, due to migration from rural hilly region to at areas of Uttarakhand. About 80% of the urban population of the state is concentrated in the plain parts of Uttarakhand. It is interesting to see that the urban population of Uttarakhand had increased by 1,859.0% between 1901 and 2011, which is more than the national growth of urban population in India (1,358.5%). is paper attempts to analyse the growth and distribution levels and trends of urbanization, and towns by size class, from 1901 to 2011, in Uttarakhand. It also deals with the distribution, literacy, sex ratio, and occupational structure of the urban population.