ABSTRACT
India’s urbanization started off late compared to the global trend in the late 1990s and has been one of the focal centers in driving economic and social changes in this fast-developing country. The early 1990s paved the way for unprecedented industrialization coupled with urbanization and in turn has paved the way for the development of four mega cities and at least a dozen fast-growing cities in the world in terms of urban space. There has been rapid urbanization since then; in about 30 years (1985–2015), we have at least 31% of the total population living in urban cities. India has continuously evolved with major urban restructuring through economic reforms, political aspiration, and spatial location value over the past three decades, under the context of globalization, public partnership, and neo-liberalization. The last three decades have seen large industrial and neo-industrial growth, with numerous job and educational opportunities that have resulted in massive urban population growth including a large migrant population from rural areas. This intense upsurge in the last decade has led to physical, social, and environmental vulnerabilities that put a strain on Indian cities, particularly and most critically in areas of planning and infrastructures. This communication unveils the recent challenges to cities and the needed strategies to mitigate the impact on people and the environment. This chapter highlights a systematic analysis of the dynamic urban process and the associated environmental changes through the integration of land use change and greenhouse gas emission and will also provide an immediate need to improve policies and plan strategies to understand the critical development necessities of the next decade. It will consider five mega cities in India to understand land use change in the last two decades and the sprawl phenomenon and will also look at the shrinking natural resources with emphasis on greenhouse gas emissions attributed to unplanned urbanization. Further, this chapter will also elaborate on land use modeling using agent-based models of urban growth and will look at different scenarios of urban growth and its implications. Finally, the last part of this chapter will focus on understanding the necessary policy interventions required for the development of smart sustainable cities in India.
