Urbanization in Western Uttar Pradesh: An Overview

Urbanization is an index of transformation of society from a traditional rural economy into an industrial and service economy including some drastic geographic, demographic, economic and social changes. Knowledge of existing urban population with respect to spatial pattern and trend are of vital importance especially in connection with planned schemes for future social-economic development. The objective of the present study is to study the trends and pattern of urban population in Western Uttar Pradesh during 20th century. The study also emphasize upon urbandemographic base, urban-economic base, social and infrastructural base for analyzing the spatial pattern of urbanization. Western Uttar Pradesh has been chosen as study area because in comparison with Central, Eastern and Bundelkhand Uttar Pradesh, Western Uttar Pradesh is the most urbanized region of the state. Present study is based on the secondary sources of data obtained from Census of India (various issues of Uttar Pradesh) and district statistical handbook. The study concludes that the western part of the study area is more urbanized than the eastern part because of the close proximity of the capital region (New Delhi) and it also consists of numerous industrial cities such as Ghaziabad, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Meerut, Mathura, and Agra.