Verticality and Horizontal Growth Trends Across 3,777 Indian Cities
India’s urban transformation is increasingly shaping global urban population growth, with its cities expanding beyond their municipal boundaries and creating peri-urban areas. Yet these areas remain inadequately recognised in official statistics, planning and governance frameworks. This working paper addresses the gaps in the identification and measurement of the true extent of urban agglomerations through the Contiguously Built Urban Agglomeration (CBUA) methodology.
The working paper examines the spatial extent of urbanisation, growth rate of built-up areas from 1990 to 2020, horizontal urban expansion beyond administrative boundaries, status of verticality, and administrative characteristics of the 3,050 contiguous agglomerations across the four category sizes. Findings show that about one-third of the built-up area and one-fourth of the built volume were outside all municipal boundaries in peri-urban areas in 2020. This growth is relative to the 2010 statutory town boundaries and is subject to data limitations. Several very large Contiguously Built Urban Agglomerations (CBUAs) and hill cities dominate in verticality, and many have complex multi-jurisdictional administrative structures. Results highlight that India’s urban growth is significantly peri-urban, requiring better recognition, integrated regional planning, improved data systems, and governance reform to counter the effects of unplanned and underserved urbanisation.
