Urban Growth Essay

Section 1: Understanding city growth

Urbanization of a nation should not only be associated with increase in city populations, but also with growth in the number of cities. It would be wrong to presume that urban growth is dominated by mega-city development. The four of the largest cities in India are home to only 5.5% of the country’s total population. Much of urbanization takes place by developing new cities and by the growth of smaller metro areas. There were just 12 cities in India which had populations greater than 1 million in 1981. By 2001, that number had grown to 35. If future projections are to be believed, there may be 68 such cities by 2020.2

The major growth drivers of cities can be grouped under 2 broad categories: Having a natural advantage such as a port city or having a favourable climate and being the hub of industrial activity. This also includes knowledge hubs. Other growth factors of cities could be whether they are centres of administration, governance, as well as infrastructural facilities. There is often a considerable first-developer advantage for a city— once it starts developing rapidly, there are greater chances that it will continue to do so, as industries, workers, and consumers are attracted, creating a clustering effect.

Agglomeration benefits initially increase with an increase in population because of the productivity advantages of an increasing scale of urban activity. Returns then start decreasing after a point as urban costs increase. After the point O the congestion, pollution costs etc increase, leading to negative externalities as population continues to expand. We can define an optimal city size as S0 at which the average social benefits are maximized. So it will be efficient if we grow each city up to this point, and then expand the nationwide urban population further by replicating such cities rather than expanding this sole city beyond its