Examine with suitable examples the recent trends in the growth of urban settlements in India.

Metropolitan concentration and sprawl

Million-plus agglomerations keep drawing migrants and capital. Mumbai–Pune, Delhi–NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad–Gandhinagar illustrate peri-urban growth: farms become plots, then gated colonies and logistics parks. Gurgaon/Gurugram is a textbook of private urbanism beside villages that supply labour and land. Floods in Chennai and Bengaluru show that growth has outrun drainage as a public good.

Census towns, secondary cities and corridors

• A large share of recent urbanisation is census towns: statutory rural, functionally urban. This is in-situ urbanisation, often along highways, not a move into the old municipal core. Tier-2 cities—Indore, Coimbatore, Lucknow, Bhubaneswar—grow as service and education hubs. Industrial corridors and ‘smart city’ projects try to plan growth; much actual settlement remains unplanned slum and peri-plot.

Gated housing, malls and SEZs produce splintered urbanism (a useful description even without the jargon as a brand): elite islands, informal work around them. Caste and religion still sort neighbourhoods. The trend is therefore dual: more urban people, and more unequal urban form.

Smaller towns along national highways in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu show ribbon development: workshops, marriage halls, coaching centres and rental rooms without a municipal plan. Hill towns and pilgrimage cities add a seasonal urbanism that the census captures poorly. Coastal peri-urban Goa and Kerala mix tourism capital with local land sale, which is another named trend: urbanisation through real estate rather than through a mill.

• Recent growth is also digital and logistical: warehouses, delivery hubs, and student PG belts around coaching and IT. That is urban settlement without a mill chimney, which matters for how we read industrialisation later in this paper.