Indian Cities or Suburbs? Trends and Causes of Suburbanization

Despite the focus on urbanization as an important theme, the suburbanization of India has received relatively less attention. Indian Cities or Suburbs? is the first comprehensive work on suburbanization in India, exploring its complex dynamics in Indian cities. It addresses critical research questions regarding the suburbanization of individuals, households, and employment, examining regional variations, contributing factors, and resultant impacts. Utilizing granular data from the Global Human Settlements Layer (GHSL) at the sub-kilometre grid level for a hundred Indian cities, Kala demonstrates the applicability of the downward-sloping population density function to India's urban context. The findings reveal that as of 2015, India's population was predominantly suburban (82%) compared to urban (33%). Southern and urbanized states exhibit greater sprawl relative to the national average, whereas slow-growing states are more compact. Employment decentralization surpasses population suburbanization, with half of all jobs concentrated within a five-kilometre radius of the urban core. The book also underscores the negative environmental impacts of sprawl, including challenges in the provision of essential services such as water supply, healthcare, education, and air quality maintenance.

Kala Seetharam Sridhar, Professor, Centre for Research in Urban Affairs, Institute for Social and Economic Change

Kala Seetharam Sridhar is a Professor at the Centre for Research in Urban Affairs, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru, India. She was a Visiting Scholar (during March–August 2024) and an Honorary Fellow (during June–August 2024) at Stanford University's Center for South Asia. She has visited George Mason University's Global South Hub in 2023 and the United Nations University's World Institute for Development Economics Research multiple times. As a Fulbright fellow, Kala was hosted by the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2021 and 2022. She has also conducted research for the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and won national and international awards for her research on urbanization. Kala is one of the Managing Editors of the Journal of Social and Economic Development (Springer).