Indian Cities or Suburbs?

Abstract This book answers research questions regarding the suburbanization of persons, households, and jobs in India’s cities, their regional variations, factors which associate with this sprawl, and their consequences. We use granular data from the Global Human Settlements Layer (GHSL) at the sub-kilometre grid level for 100 Indian cities. We find that the downward-sloping population density function is appropriate for studying India’s cities. Next, we find India’s population was significantly more suburban (82%) than urban (33%) in 2015. We find that cities in the south Indian and urbanized states are more sprawling when compared with cities across all India, for 2015. Those in the slow-growing states are relatively more compact. We find that employment is more decentralized than population suburbanization in 2015. We find that, on average, half of all jobs are concentrated in a 5-km compass of the city core. Jobs in urban areas of the southern and the metropolitanized states are more suburbanized relative to cities in the slow-growing states and those in the entire country, for 2011. We find the time-lagged value of the 1975 population gradient has a powerful association with the 2015 gradient and changes in the density gradient over 1975–2015, and that poor central city economic conditions push residents away to the suburbs. We find negative effects of sprawl on the environment and the delivery of basic services, such as water supply, healthcare and education, and air quality.