Expansion of Delhi Urban area into its suburbs—A study

Some of the many un-assorted issues associated to urbanisation in India are urban sprawl, over-crowding, housing, unemployment, slums and squatter Settlements, inadequate transport, shortage of potable water, sewerage problems, unplanned waste disposal, urban crimes, urban pollution and many more. Urban sprawl or real expansion of the cities, both in population and geographical area, of rapidly growing cities is the root cause of urban problems. In most cities the economic base is incapable of dealing with the problems created by their excessive size. Massive immigration from rural areas as well as from small towns into big cities has taken place almost consistently; thereby adding to the size of cities. This is due to the fact that such large cities act as magnets and attract large number of immigrants by dint of their employment opportunities and modern way of life. Such hyper-urbanisation leads to projected cities sizes of which defy imagination. Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, etc. are examples of urban sprawl due to large scale migration of people from the surrounding areas into it. Delhi deserves special mention for two reasons; one that it happens to be the capital city of India where planning gets the first taste of implementation and secondly Delhi's urban expansion is not within the state boundary, but beyond it.