Abstract
Sprawl is recognized as one of the distinctive features of the urbanizing landscape in almost all countries irrespective of their urban developmental status; but despite a growing volume of literature on this subject the concept continues to elude us. In the context of the changing urban landscape such as the declining growth rates of the metro cities, the spatial expansion of their peripheral urban land into the surrounding countryside, and the sudden growth of the newly reclassified former villages as ‘census towns’ in the last decade, sprawl studies—primarily in the context of individual city regions—have gained momentum in India in recent years. This paper aims to make a small contribution to the literature by focusing on the Delhi Urban Agglomeration (DUA), one of the dynamic city-regions of the world. Given the universal emphasis on density as one of the major dimensions of sprawl, we used a simple and measurable density index based on census data to compute the density levels of ‘census towns’ around the core city in the DUA during 2001–2011. The results show an incremental change towards scattered low-density settlements across the study area that may portend future sprawl. The study points to the suitability of using simple measurable indices based on easily available and nationally applicable data for detailed multi-dimensional empirical studies on sprawl. Apart from theoretical interest, such studies at national and regional scales across India would be of value to planners from the standpoint of sustainable development in the urban agglomeration regions of mega cities.
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Notes
- 1.
The growth rates of the Census Towns over the 2001–2011 decade appear to have wide regional variations (e.g., about 90 % of the urban growth in the southern state of Kerala can be attributed to the growth of the Census Towns whose number increased from 99 to 461 during this period).
- 2.
Viewed together, they are remarkable as much for their commonalities, as for their differences. The former underscores an almost intuitive universal understanding of the essence of sprawl, what a sprawl is (reminiscent of the now-famous statement in context of pornography), as well as for an almost universal acceptance of the relevance of density in any consideration of sprawl. The later has arisen primarily due to the differences in the disciplinary backgrounds of the researchers, research focus (e.g., theoretical, empirical, or both), research techniques/variables used (e.g., use of remote sensing/GIS, demographic data, or both), and the perpetuation of the aforementioned ‘semantic wilderness’ (Galster et al. 2001) by including issues such as examples, characteristics, causes, consequences, patterns, and process of sprawl in defining this concept.
- 3.
Lopez and Hynes used their Sprawl Index (SIi) on 330 out of 331 metropolitan areas in the USA., and came to the conclusion that while sprawl increased in many metropolitan areas, there were “important geographic variations in sprawl, implying that it is neither inevitable not universal” (2003, p. 325).
- 4.
Per the Census definition (Census of India 1991, p. 7), some places that do not fully meet the above criteria but show some ‘distinct urban characteristics’ would also qualify.
- 5.
See Ramachandran (1989, p. 112) for a discussion of the concept.
- 6.
Per Census of India (2011), an “Out Growth (OG) is a viable unit such as a village or a hamlet or an enumeration block made up of such village or hamlet and clearly identifiable in terms of its boundaries and location”.
- 7.
The average density of the AADC (136/ha) was much lower than that of the Delhi Core (218/ha) comprising all three units; the gap becomes more noticeable (248 vs. 136) when only the DMC, with 97 % population of the Core, is taken into account.
- 8.
Historically, Indian Census has treated ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ as two distinct dichotomous concepts with clear definitional boundaries. Yet, in the AADC (as in the rest of the country in varying degrees) the census towns symbolize an evolving ‘hybrid’ landscape between urban and rural that can be an argument in favor of a paradigm shift from dichotomy to continuum, as well as for focusing on census towns in future studies.
- 9.
We used Census Towns instead of census tracts that we divided into different density categories. We also decided to use the density status of the CTs relative to the average density of all the CTs and the rural territory to determine our density-threshold. For a discussion of the importance of determining the appropriate density threshold, and the potentials of distortion with up or downward movement of the high/low density threshold, see Lopez and Hynes (2003, p. 334).
- 10.
The method we used in the measurement and characterization of urban sprawl benefits from the use of official Census data gathering. In many countries it is conducted in a well-planned process in a regular, periodic schedule (i.e. decadal as in India and the U.S.). The Census units (polygon areas) are established and used for gathering and reporting the results and may be aggregated to polygons as various levels (e.g., national, state, local political subdivisions). In addition to population count, opportunities exist for gathering a wide variety of social, economic and residential characteristics from census reports thus making it a valuable data source.
- 11.
We had used the L-H Sprawl Index in a previous paper on the same study area (Mookherjee and Hoerauf 2004) in which a computational error resulted the index score for 2001 as 49.5. The correct index score of 17.5 is reported in the present study that is an extension of the previous research.
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Mookherjee, D., Hoerauf, E. (2015). Is It Sprawling Yet? A Density-Based Exploration of Sprawl in the Urban Agglomeration Region Around the Mega City of Delhi. In: Singh, R. (eds) Urban Development Challenges, Risks and Resilience in Asian Mega Cities. Advances in Geographical and Environmental Sciences. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-55043-3_3
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