Determinants Of Growth In Non-Municipal Areas Of Delhi: Rural–Urban Dichotomy Revisited

The current discourse on urbanization calls for new approaches to capture the peculiarities of growth in the global South. This paper takes the National Capital Territory of Delhi as a case study and adopts a mix of methods (field survey, ordinary least squares regression and geographically weighted regression) to highlight the emerging gradient of urbanization within official rural areas. The results show a certain catching-up effect in which the settlements with low population and employment rate grow faster than more urbanized settlements. Settlements with low basic infrastructure provision (such as schools and medical facilities), which are mainly census towns, tend to grow more slowly than villages with better infrastructure provision. Additionally, local characteristics of growth vary spatially depending on the distribution of socio-economic, demographic, and infrastructure variables. To avoid the unplanned transformation of villages into urban areas in Delhi and similar regions of the global South, this paper recommends moving from master planning towards strategic spatial planning, implementing integrated planning and governance of non-municipal peri-urban areas, and reforming spatial plans and development policies based on scientific methods.