Abstract
Rapid urban growth is a relatively new phenomenon in India. Up to the end of the First World War some urban growth took place, but neither the proportion of the total population in urban places nor the rate of increase of the urban population itself was startling. With the decade 1921 to 1931, urbanisation became a noticeable phenomenon in India, and the rate of urban growth has accelerated with each decade since then. Moreover, the cities and larger towns (that is, urban places with more than 20 000 inhabitants) have grown more rapidly than those with only quasi-urban features. These trends of urban growth in India during the last few decades are presented in Table 10.1.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
See Ashish Bose. The Process of Urbanisation in India, doctoral dissertation, University of Delhi (1959), pp. 168–9. A similar comparison between Indian and United States urban growth, although not with the period 1840–90, but an earlier period (1790–1850), is made by Kingsley Davis, The Population of India and Pakistan, Princeton 1951, pp. 127–8.
Eric Lampard. Urban-Rural Conflict in the United States, 1870–1920: An Ecological Perspective on Industrialisation, a paper read at the University of Michigan (May 1959). (mimeographed.)
All data in this and the preceding paragraph are from Bose. Op. cit., pp. 217–218.
See A. F. Weber. The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century, New York (1899), passim.
Estimates of recent migration to the large cities of India have been published in S. N. Agarwala. A Method for Estimating Decade Internal Migration in Cities from Indian Census Data, Indian Economic Review, 4, No. 1 (February, 1958), 59–76; a comprehensive study of rural-urban migrations in later-nineteenth-century Europe is found in P. Meuriot. Les agglomérations urbaines dans L’Europe contemporaine, Paris (1897), pp. 309–32.
See Meuriot. Op. cit., pp. 285–7.
The increasing population pressure on agricultural resources in India is the main theme of the Report of Shri R. A. Gopalaswami, I.C.A., the census commissioner of the last census; see Census of India, 1951, I, Part I-A, pp. 138–50, and Part I-B, Appendixes I and V. For a later analysis see Report on India’s Food Crisis and Steps to Meet It, Delhi 1959, pp. 9–20, by the Agricultural Production Team of the Ford Foundation.
See Bert F. Hoselitz. Population Pressure, Industrialisation and Social Mobility, Population Studies, XI, No. 2 (November, 1957), p. 126.
This paper is also reprinted in Bert F. Hoselitz. Sociological Aspects of Economic Growth, Glencoe, Ill. (1960).
See Max Weber. The City, trans. and ed. Don Martindale and Gertrude Neuwirth, Glencoe Ill. (1958), chap. ii.
For a publication which graphically represents some planned urban growth in mediaeval cities see F. L. Ganshof. Étude sur le développement des villes entre Loire et Rhin au moyen âge, Brussels (1943), especially the Appendix (maps).
For some examples of this see the sections on Neighborhood Relations, and An Indian ‘Ghetto’, in A. Bopegamage. Delhi: A Study in Urban Sociology, Bombay (1957), pp. 93–109.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 1974 Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hoselitz, B.F. (1974). The Role of Urbanisation in Economic Development: Some International Comparisons. In: Dwyer, D.J. (eds) The City in the Third World. The Geographical Readings series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-86177-4_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-86177-4_11
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-15409-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-86177-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)