Future of City Growth

Future of City Growth: At the outset, we have discussed the faster pace of urban growth in developing countries. However, one should note that the high pace of urban growth or city growth is in comparison to those of developed countries.

From the Table, it is clear that the rates of urban growth in the last five decades have declined considerably and these will further decline in the future. Up to the 1970s growth rates were fluctuating but since the 1980s these have been declining steadily. Declining rates of natural increase and net migration are the main drivers of declining urban growth in the developing world.

While with the overall progress of society rate of natural increase of population is expected to decline, the rate of migration from rural to urban areas is expected to increase as Davis (Davis, 1951 in Kundu and Gupta, 2000,p. 260) argued increase in the level of education, dilution of the caste system, the emergence of nuclear family structure, delay in marriage, improvement of transport and communication facilities, growth of non-farm activities etc. increase the rural-urban migration.

Liberalisation of the economy in developing countries since the 1980s was also envisaged to boost rural-urban migration as on the one hand, liberalisation creates new employment opportunities in the cities (as argued by the proponents of liberalisation) and on the other hand, it (along with the adaptation of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs)) leads to the stagnation of the agrarian economy in rural areas (as argued by the opponents of liberalisation).

Fortunately or unfortunately the rate of urban-ward migration has not increased in the past two-three decades rather in many cases it has actually gone down or has remained stagnant. In fact, the policies to restrict the flow of migrants to the cities (such as the “hukou” system in China, the “Closed city” policy in Jakarta, “ho khau” policy in Vietnam etc.) and deliberated initiatives taken by the governments for the rural development and that of employment for the rural poor (for example, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in India, rural industrialisation in China in the 1980s etc.) have curbed the flow of exodus to the cities.

As a result, rural-urban migration is losing its dominant control in the growth of the city population and currently, city growth is largely driven by the natural increase (UN-Habitat, 2013, p. 25). Given this trend, it would not be erroneous to believe that in the near future growth of cities in the developing world be more and more sluggish.

Table: Trends of Urban Growth (Average Annual Exponential Growth Rates)

Year	World	Developed Countries	Developing Countries	Latin America and Caribbean Countries	South America	Africa	Asia
1950-55	2.97	2.33	3.83	4.44	4.58	4.66	3.5
1960-65	3.06	2.08	4.15	4.39	4.4	5.1	3.76
1970-75	2.62	1.47	3.67	3.81	3.75	4.4	3.37
1980-85	2.66	0.93	3.86	2.98	3.09	4.3	3.81
1990-95	2.34	0.74	3.19	2.38	2.33	3.78	3.13
2000-05	2.07	0.61	2.68	1.86	1.95	3.38	2.62
2010-15	1.91	0.52	2.39	1.51	1.48	3.23	2.31
2020-25	1.7	0.46	2.07	1.14	1.07	3	1.97
2025-30	1.6	0.42	1.91	0.98	0.91	2.87	1.79

However, the identity of the city is not confined to its administrative boundary rather it extends beyond. Keeping this in view, experts have made a strong case for considering the metropolitan region as an urban unit (for the metro cities). And if we consider the metropolitan region as a unit the city will continue to grow in the near future, although different parts of the metropolitan region will grow at different paces and that will depend on other factors like the history of the city and the region, size and age of the main city, nature of the economy of the whole region, the attitude of local governments towards the poor migrants etc.

Taking the case of Indian metropolises we can show the complex pattern of their growth and comment on their future growth. However, because of the lack of available data, we confined this analysis to the urban agglomerations of the corresponding metros rather than considering the whole metropolitan region.

As per the Table pattern of growth of the urban agglomerations can be conceptualised in four ways of which “growing core; growing periphery” and “declining core and declining periphery” are the two major types. The former is more applicable to the small (like Agra, Amritsar, Dhanbad etc.) and economically vibrant (like, Pune, Surat etc.) metropolises while the latter is largely associated with the very large metropolises (like Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai) and those with the comparatively stagnant economy (like, Allahabad, Lucknow, Vijayawada etc.).

On the other hand, the urban agglomerations which are characterised by “declining core; growing periphery” fall somewhere in between the previous two extreme categories. Other important findings from this table are the growth rates of the cores of all the large metropolises (except Bangalore and Pune which are relatively new in origin).

There are two major reasons behind this, firstly, from the old areas of the city core working age group population is out-migrating because of stagnant or declining employment opportunities (as large-scale industries have been shifted from the core), deterioration of housing stocks, narrow lanes, lack of enough space for car parking, “waterlogging during the rains” etc. (Shaw, 2015, p. 150); second, large scale slum eviction from the cores (except in Kolkata) (Bhan, 2009, 2014; Bhan and Shivanand, 2013; Dupont, 2008; Johnston, 2014; Mahadevia, 2011; Modi, 2009; Ramnathan, 2005; etc.).

Metropolitan Region: Metropolitan region is a planning area of a metro city, demarcated by the respective planning authority. It consists of the metro city (or the core city) and surrounding urban areas and rural areas which would be urbanised in the near future. Thus, metropolitan region is much larger than urban agglomeration.

Urban Agglomeration: Urban agglomeration is a contagious spread of urban areas consisting of a core town/city (which must be a statutory town) and its outgrowth or a core town/city and the adjoining urban areas.

Thus, the urban agglomeration has two components- core i.e. the core city/town and periphery i.e. the urban units surrounding the core city/town. Unlike metropolitan regions, an urban agglomeration is defined and demarcated by the census of India. Almost all metro cities are virtually urban agglomerations.

Table: Growth Rate Differentials of Core and Periphery of Metropolitan Cities in India.

	1981-	91	1991-	2001	2001-	11
Metropolises	Core	Periphery	Core	Periphery	Core	Periphery
A: Declining core; growing periphery
Ahmedabad*	2.11	2.58	2	3.11	4.7	-2.48
Asansol	3.64	2.23	0.96	3.56	1.73	1.37
Coimbatore	1.48	1.79	1.23	2.73	1.32	7.47
Delhi	3.59	3.59	3.09	4.18	1.09	5.88
B: Growing core; declining periphery
Bangalore^	0.71	3.36	4.79	3.2	6.96	-25.53
C: Growing core; growing periphery
Agra	2.51	2.38	3.46	3.32	2.13	11.83
Amritsar	1.76	1.76	3.19	3.56	1.6	3.23
Dhanbad#	2.33	1.73	2.71	2.67	19.28	-27.71
Indore	2.75	2.9	3.8	3.91	2.89	17.3
Jabalpur	1.89	1.6	2.48	2.29	1.24	2.57
Jamshedpur	0.5	1.98	2.13	2.84	0.95	2.9
Kanpur	2.3	2.53	3.01	2.81	0.81	-0.7
Patna	1.66	1.8	4.06	4.4	2.11	0.92
Pune	2.64	3.88	4.83	4.09	2.07	4.7
Rajkot	2.29	3.86	5.47	4.26	2.89	11.33
Surat*	4.84	4.97	4.85	6.16	6.25	-10.59
D: Declining core; declining periphery
Allahabad	2.52	2.62	2.22	2.18	1.37	4.07
Bhopal	4.6	4.6	2.99	3.14	2.25	15.34
Chennai	1.59	2.23	0.93	1.7	0.75	6.12
Greater Mumbai	1.86	4.22	1.82	2.62	0.41	2.91
Hyderabad^^	3.31	5.2	1.58	2.42	6.47	-7.75
Kochi	1.27	3.24	0.24	1.73	0.1	7.15
Kolkata	0.64	1.72	0.4	1.82	-0.19	1.09
Lucknow	5.35	4.88	3.12	3.06	2.56	3.72
Vijayawada	2.85	3.21	1.62	1.86	2.1	8.93
Vishakhapatnam	2.85	5.6	2.55	2.3	–	–

Notes: *Boundary changed between 2001 and 2011.

^ Bangalore Municipal Corporation was reconstituted as Bruhat Bangaluru Mahanagar Palike in 2007.

^^ Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad was constituted as Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation.
# Dhanbad Municipal Corporation was created by merging Dhanbad Municipality and surrounding areas in 2006.

Thus, it is likely that in the near future the metropolises with “C” type of growth will graduate to “A” type and subsequently will move on to the “D” type of growth and future growth policy and nature of economy will determine the length of time required for these transitions.