Growth of Urban Centres in Haryana: A Temporal Analysis

Abstract

Urban growth is an increase in the number of people who live in towns and cities. It is the outcome of concentration of population in response to the availability of diverse amenities and facilities in the urban centre. Due to urban growth, Haryana, as one of the developed states of India, has seen a considerable change in the number of urban settlements during 1901-2011 period.      

The study of urban growth by size class of towns is helpful in understanding the stages of urban development in a country/state. The present paper, therefore, is a modest attempt to investigate the urban growth by size class of towns in Haryana since 1901. It is based on census data from 1901-2011.

Urban population of Haryana recorded more than 15 times increase; from 5.7 lakh in 1901 to 88.2 lakh in 2011. A large part of increase in urban population is attributed to emergence of new towns to take the total number of towns to 154 in 2011 as compared to 54 in 1901.

In order to provide a meaningful analysis of the changes in size-class composition of urban population, the various categories of urban centres have been divided into four groups: (i) cities (the urban centres with population of one lakh and more); however, the cities with population of 10 lakh and more, i.e. one million and above, are termed as million plus cities; (ii) large towns (the urban centres with population of 50,000 to 9 9,999); (iii) medium towns (the urban centres with population of 20,000 to 49,999); and (iv) small towns (the urban centres with population of <5000 to 19,999).

Though, the small towns (having population of less than 20,000 persons) predominate in the hierarchy of towns, but the proportion of urban population residing in these towns is on continuous decrease from 37.34 per cent in 1951 to 9.12 percent in 2011. By comparison, about three-fourth (68.02 per cent) of the total urban population of the state is living in the cities and million-plus cities as per 2011 census. This shows that the majority of population prefers to live in cities and million-plus cities mainly because of better urban amenities and employment avenues available there.