Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

Geography is the study of the physical and human/social environments of the Earth, while urban inquiry focuses on the people and processes of cities and towns — which now account, for the first time in human history, for a majority of the world’s population.  Urban geography, then, is concerned with the relations among people, and between people and their environments, in cities and towns across the world.

Such a simple definition is indeed helpful, but it’s only a first step.  Consider both terms in the phrase “urban geography.”  The “urban” is often a debated category:  for some, the term includes a wide range of comparatively dense settlements, from big cities all the way to small towns and even low-density suburbs out on the edges of cities; for others, the word is only useful if it refers to the densest parts of the biggest cities with millions of people.  There is also some disagreement, moreover, on what is distinctively and fundamentally urban about the important social, economic, and political changes of our era:  yes, we see a lot of fascinating things happening in cities, but does the city change any of the processes underway in society?  Despite these disagreements — and perhaps because of them — the “urban” is at the heart of the most urgent questions being asked in many fields today.  One of the most prominent urban geographers sums up the history this way:

“The study of urban places is central to many social sciences, including geography, because of their importance not only in the distribution of population within countries but also in the organization of economic production, distribution, and exchange, in the structuring of social reproduction and cultural life, and in the exercise of political power.  Sub-fields of the different social science disciplines were established in the decades after the Second World War to study these separate components, such as urban anthropology, economics, geography, politics, and sociology; later attempts were made to integrate these under the umbrella title of urban studies.”  (Johnston 2000, p. 870).

The second part — geography — brings us into interesting territory.  Many people don’t really understand what geography is, other than the elementary-school memorization of countries, capitals, and commodities.   Don’t we already know where everything is?  But even once we get past those widespread popular misconceptions, it can still be rather difficult to categorize geographers.  “Like other aspects of human geography,” Paul Knox and Linda McCarthy write, “urban geography is concerned with ‘local variability within a general context.’  This means that it is concerned with an understanding of both the distinctiveness of individual places (in this case, towns and cities) and the regularities within and between cities in terms of the spatial relationships between people and their environment.”   (Knox and McCarthy 2005, p. 2, citing Johnston 1984, p. 444).  Environment means both the physical-natural and human-social worlds, reflecting the shared heritage of human and physical geography.  In turn, the human-physical duality in the field hints at the sense of ambiguity that you probably detect when you talk with geographers:  they’re pretty hard to pigeonhole, not only because some of them study physical phenomena (climate, rivers, mountains, forests) while others focus on human processes (social, economic, political).  But they also seem to go about their work in very different ways, using different tools, languages, and styles of communication.  As a result, geographers might very well be best described as undisciplined members of an elusive discipline.  If you’re a bit unsettled by all this ambiguity, you’re in good company.  The eminent historian of geography David Livingstone describes efforts to summarize the field this way:

“Because the term ‘geography’ means, and has meant, different things to different people in different times and places, there is no agreed-upon consensus on what constitutes the project of writing the history of this enterprise.  Moreover, while the story of geography as an independent scholarly discipline is inescapably bound up with the history of the professionalization of academic knowledge since around the middle of the nineteenth century, it is clear that the history of geography as a discourse not only operates without such constraints but also reaches beyond the historical and institutional confines of the modern-day discipline.  Of course geography as discourse and discipline are interrelated in intimate ways — one might even say that the purpose of a discipline is precisely to ‘discipline’ discourse.”  (Livingston 2000, p. 304).

First, how do cities and other kinds of human settlements vary across time and space?  How has the evolution of cities reflected prevailing historical conditions?  What are the crucial differences between cities within particular regions or countries, and between different countries?  How do certain cities reflect the distinctive circumstances of their geographical context?

Second, what regularities unite seemingly different cities?  What are the similarities in patterns, processes, and relationships within different cities, and in networks between cities?

Third, how do social relations shape the form of the city?  How are particular activities, land uses, and social groups distributed within and among cities?

Fourth, how does the form of the city shape social relations?  How do spatial constraints and locational considerations, for example, influence the way that people decide where to live and where to work?  How do the geographies of cities created in previous generations influence the decisions of today’s corporations, investors, and governments as they gradually create new urban geographies?

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Cities  can be traced back to the river valley civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus Valley and China. These settlements were largely dependent upon agriculture surplus in initial days. With the growth of population the city size increased and the economic activity transformed to trading and other secondary activities. The process of urbanization accelerated with industrial revolution 200 years ago and further with globalization in 1990’s.

Urbanisation refers to the growth of the towns and cities due to large proportion of the population living in urban areas and its suburbs at the expense of its rural areas. In most of the countries the total population living in the urban regions has increased since the Second World War. Current global population is 7,057,075,000 billion (Population Reference Bureau, 2005; United Nations, 2011).

The rapid urbanization of the world’s population over the 20th century is evident from the dramatic increase in global urban population from 13% (220 million, in 1900), to 29% (732 million, in 1950), to 49% (3.2 billion, in 2005) and is expected to increase to 60% (4.9 billion) by 2030  and 9.6 billion in 2050 (United Nations, 2011).Urban population has been increasing three times faster than the rural population, mainly due to migration in most parts of the world (Girardet 1996; Massey et. al., 1999).

People migrate to urban areas with the hope of a better living, considering relatively better infrastructural facilities (education, recreation, health centers, banking, transport and communication), and higher per capita income. However, rapid unplanned urbanization has led to serious problems in urban areas due to higher pollution (air, water, noise) inequitable distribution of natural traffic congestion, development of shanty towns and slums, unemployment, increased reliance on fossil fuels, and uncontrolled outgrowth or sprawl in the periphery The direct implication of such urbanisation is the change in land use and land cover of the region.

Urban ecosystems are the consequence of the intrinsic nature of humans as social beings to live together (Sudhira, et al., 2003). The process of urbanisation contributed by infrastructure initiatives and consequent population growth and migration results in the growth of villages into towns, towns into cities and cities into metros. However, in such a phenomenon for ecologically feasible development, planning requires an understanding of the growth dynamics. Nevertheless, in most cases there are lot of inadequacies to ascertain the nature of uncontrolled progression of urban sprawls.

Urban sprawl refers to the dispersed development along highways or surrounding the city and in rural countryside with implications such as loss of agricultural land, open space and ecologically sensitive habitats. Sprawl is thus a pattern and pace of land use in which the rate of land consumed for urban purposes exceeds the rate of population growth resulting in an inefficient and consumptive use of land and its associated resources. This phenomenon is characterized by an unplanned and uneven pattern of growth, driven by multitude of processes evident from lack of basic amenities. Urban sprawl is thus a term often used variously to mean the gluttonous use of land, uninterrupted monotonous development, leapfrog discontinuous development and inefficient use of land that are influenced by a myriad of factors, including land features, infrastructure, policies, and individual characteristics. This is characterised by low levels of some combination of eight distinct dimensions such as density, continuity, concentration, clustering, centrality, nuclearity, mixed uses and proximity.

Process of urbanisation bring the development of a region , which could be planned (in the form of townships) or unplanned (organic). Unplanned urbanization leads to the haphazard or irregular growth with the loss of green spaces and water bodies. Dispersed urban growth without proper infrastructure and basic amenities is often referred as sprawl  and this phenomenon is widespread in developing countries. Implications of sprawl are excess demand on natural resources, improper allocation of basic amenities and infrastructure, , deteriorating water quality, an increased potential for harboring disease vectors, etc. Large scale land use and land cover changes, such as the loss of forests to meet the urban demands of fuel and has led to the changes in the ecosystem structure, impacting its functioning and thereby threatening sustainable development.

Urban areas have been recognized as “engines of inclusive economic growth”. Of the 121 crore Indians, 83.3 crore live in rural areas while 37.7 crore stay in urban areas, i.e approximately 32 % of the population. The census of India, 2011 defines urban settlement as :-

All the places which have municipality, corporation, cantonment board or notified town area committee

All the other places which satisfy following criteria:

1. A minimum population of 5000 persons ;
2. At least 75 % of male main working population engaged in non-agricultural pursuits ; and
3. A density of population of at least 400 persons per square kilometer

 Statutory Town

All Municipal areas and other urban areas declared as such by the  government are statutory towns. they have their own administrative structure and in most cases can levy taxes.

 Census Town

Census towns are areas outside the statutory towns that have distinct urban characteristics like population density (above 400 per sq. km), minimum population size of 5000 and more than 75% of male workers engaged in non agricultural activities.

These were identified on the basis of census 2001 data. Cities are urban areas with more than 100,000 population. Urban areas below 100,000 are called towns in India.

Similarly Census of India defines:-

Urban Agglomeration (UA): An urban agglomeration is a continuous urban spread constituting a town and its adjoining outgrowths (OGs), or two or more physically contiguous towns together with or without outgrowths of such towns. An Urban Agglomeration must consist of at least a statutory town and its total population (i.e. all the constituents put together) should not be less than 20,000 as per the 2001 Census. In varying local conditions, there were similar other combinations which have been treated as urban agglomerations satisfying the basic condition of contiguity. Examples: Greater Mumbai UA, Delhi UA, etc.

Urban Out Growths (UOG): An Urban Out Growth (UOG) 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. Some of the examples are railway colony, university campus, port area, military camps, etc., which have come up near a statutory town outside its statutory limits but within the revenue limits of a village or villages contiguous to the town.

Standard Urban Area(SUA)
A new concept that had been developed for the 1971 Census for the tabulation of certain urban data was the Standard Urban Area. The essential of a Standard Urban Area are :

(i) it should have a core town of a minimum population size of 50,000,
(ii) the contiguous areas made up of other urban as well as rural administrative units should have close mutual socio- economic links with the core town and
(iii) the probabilities are that this entire area will get fully urbanised in a period of two to three decades.

The idea is that it should be possible to provide comparable data for a definite area of urbanisation continuously for three decades which would give a meaningful picture. This replaced the concepts of Town Group that was in vogue at the 1961 Census. The town group was made up of independent urban units not necessarily contiguous to one another but were to some extent inter-dependent. The data for such town groups became incomparable from census to census as the boundaries of the towns themselves changed and the intermediate areas were left out of account; this concept came for criticism at one of the symposium of the International Geographic Union in Nov.-Dec.1968 and the concept of Standard Urban Area came to be developed for adoption at the 1971 Census. If data for this Standard Area were to be made available in the next two or three successive censuses it is likely to yield much more meaningful picture to study urbanisation around large urban nuclei.

While determining the outgrowth of a town, it has been ensured that it possesses the urban features in terms of infrastructure and amenities such as pucca roads, electricity, taps, drainage system for disposal of waste water etc. educational institutions, post offices, medical facilities, banks etc. and physically contiguous with the core town of the UA. Examples: Central Railway Colony (OG), Triveni Nagar (N.E.C.S.W.) (OG), etc.

Each such town together with its outgrowth(s) is treated as an integrated urban area and is designated as an ‘urban agglomeration’. Number of towns/UA/OG 2011, according to Census 2011 Census are :-

1 Statutory Towns — 4,041
2 Census Towns — 3,894
3 Urban Agglomerations — 475
4 Out Growths — 981
At the central level, nodal agencies which look after program and policies for urban development are Ministry of housing and urban poverty alleviation (MoHUPA) and Ministry of Urban development. Urban development is a state subject. At state level there are respective ministries, but according to 74th Constitutional Amendment act,1992, it is mandatory for every state to form ULBs and devolve power, conduct regular election, etc. Under 12 schedule of Indian constitution , 18 such functions have been defined which are to be performed by ULBs and for that states should support the ULBs through finances and decentralization of power, for more autonomy. But this is not uniform throughout all the states and still more is need to be done to empower ULBs in India.

Urban areas are managed by urban local bodies(ULBs), who look after the service delivery and grievance redressal of citizens. There are eight type of urban local government in India- municipal corporation municipality, notified area committee, town area committee, cantonment board, township, port trust and special purpose agencies.

Metropolis

The Constitution (seventy-fourth Amendment) Act, 1992 defines a metropolitan area in India as, an area having a population of ten lakhs or more, comprised in one or more districts and consisting of two or more Municipalities or Panchayats or other contiguous areas, specified by the Governor by public notification to be a Metropolitan area.

Here is a list of Metropolitan Cities of India.

Megacity

A megacity is usually defined as a metropolitan area with a total population in excess of ten million people.A megacity can be a single metropolitan area or two or more metropolitan areas that converge. The terms conurbation, metropolis and metroplex are also applied to the latter.

A megalopolis (sometimes called a megapolis; also megaregion, or supercity) is typically defined as a chain of roughly adjacent metropolitan areas, which may be somewhat separated or may merge into a continuous urban region.

The term was used by Patrick Geddes in his 1915 book Cities in Evolution,by Oswald Spengler in his 1918 book The Decline of the West, and Lewis Mumford in his 1938 book The Culture of Cities, which described it as the first stage in urban overdevelopment and social decline. Later, it was used by Jean Gottmann in his landmark 1961 study, Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States, to describe the chain of metropolitan areas along the northeastern seaboard of the US, extending from Boston, Massachusetts, through New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore and ending in Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia.The latter is sometimes called the “BosWash megalopolis”. The term has been interpreted as meaning “supercity”.

Emerging megalopolises in the developing world include the Pearl River Delta, which when formed will constitute the core part of a Southern China Coast megaregion; the Unified Jakarta-Bandung metro area forming the core of the Northern Javamegaregion; and the Yangtze River Delta core, a part of a Central Chinese Coast megaregion.

Conurbation

Conurbation refers to a specific kind of geographical region. Due to rapid increase in population and industrial and technological development, the city boundary expands and one urban centre coalesces with another in a slow but continuous process of urbanisation and regional development. It is thus that conurbations are formed.

A conurbation is a region comprising a number of cities, large towns, and other urban areas that, through population growth and physical expansion, have merged to form one continuous urban or industrially developed area. In most cases, a conurbation is a polycentric urbanised area, in which transportation has developed to link areas to create a single urban labour market or travel to work area.

The term “conurbation” was coined in 1915 by Patrick Geddes in his book Cities In Evolution. He drew attention to the ability of the then new technology of electric power and motorised transport to allow cities to spread and agglomerate together, and gave as examples “Midlandton” in England, the Ruhr in Germany, Randstad in the Netherlands and North Jersey in the United States.

The word ‘conurbation’ has emerged from the words ‘continuous’ and ‘urban area’. The word was used by Patrick Geddes in 1915 with reference to a continuous urban area of more than two urban centres which may have separate territorial units. C.B. Fawcett defines a conurbation as “an area occupied by a continuous series of dwellings, factories and other buildings including harbours, docks, urban parks and playing fields, etc. which are not separated from each other by the rural land…” J.C. Saoyne defines conurbation as “an area of urban development where a number of separate towns have grown into each other and become linked by such factors as common industrial or business interest or a common centre of shopping and education”. R.E. Dickinson calls it an “urban tract” while Jean Gottamman refers to it as “extended city” or “Super Metropolitan Region”.

Urban Field

The urban field is a form of urban habitat of relatively high density involving a good transportation system and a broad array of economic, social and recreational opportunities. Even though the sections of the urban field may still be in agricultural use, the area is nonetheless urbanized because anywhere within it a person is able to connect his/her home to telephones, radio and television facilities, electricity, gas, water supply systems and a network of freeway and primary roads.

Ethnoburb

An ethnoburb is a suburban residential as well as business area with a notable cluster of a particular ethnic minority population. Although the group may not constitute the majority within the region, it is a significant amount of the population.That can greatly influence the social geography within the area .

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