Abstract
The National Capital Region, (NCR, Delhi) in India is one of the first and foremost examples of extensive regional planning efforts in South Asia, created with the goal of containing the growth of the core, while controlling and regulating the development of the surrounding region for sustainability. A hybrid and evolving urban-rural region, the NCR, can thus be considered a laboratory for both theoretical and empirical exploration. The uneven urban-rural linkages, flows and traits, produced by exogenous and endogenous forces, that characterize the urban-rural interface of the city region are widely acknowledged; calls for holistically examining these, at localized or micro-scales for targeted planning purposes, are rising. In this chapter, I incorporate aspects of my tri-pronged approach—the concurrent consideration of multidimensionality, urban-rural interface (URI), and scalar variations—in an exploratory study at a disaggregated observational scale representing both urban and rural elements. I observe intra-regional variations and changes in urban-developmental patterns within the NCR vis-à-vis the NCR planning objectives. Principal Component and Cluster analyses are used to observe static structural patterns in 2001 and 2011, as well as changes that took place between the two periods. In each model, results reveal distinct clusters, with intra-group similarities and inter-group differences in traits indicating mixed success of the NCR plan. The results also underscore the potential applications of my approach for sustainable developmental planning for the Asian MCR.
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Notes
- 1.
My conceptualization of the ‘spread region’ (SR) and the URI has been discussed in Chapter 4.
- 2.
For example, see “the measures to policy instruments”, NGO’s role in development; multi-stakeholder’s platforms; green rating for integrated Habitat assessment (GRIHA); Joint forest management (JFM); Women’s empowerment under Integrated Infrastructural Development (IFD); National Knowledge Network (NKN); and Waste Minimization Circles (WMC).
- 3.
There are two types of administrative units characterizing urban settlements in India: statutory towns (defined by a statute, e.g., municipal corporation, municipal council, etc.) and ‘census towns’ (defined by a set of population and workforce criteria), and six classes of urban centers marked by population size. Class I: 100,000 and more; Class II: 50,000–99,999; Class III: 20,000–49,999; Class IV: 10,000–19,999; Class V: 5000–9999; and Class VI: less than 5000 population (Census of India 2001). In line with the recommendation of the National Commission on Urbanization (1988), we excluded the three smallest classes below 20,000 population from our study. For a view that many urban centers (‘quasi-urban’) below 20,000 population did not meet the basic ‘functional and other’ urban characteristics, see Bose (1994, p. 7).
- 4.
The difference between the total areal size as noted in the Regional Plan 2021, and the information presented here is due to reorganization, e.g., Panipat district in Haryana, Palwal in U.P., and as per reporting of the Government of Rajasthan, for the Rajasthan sub-region of the NCR (see, Regional Plan 2021, NCRPB 2013).
- 5.
Interestingly, no mention of areal sizes for the respective zones can be found in the corresponding sections in the 2013 update of the Regional Plan 2021.
- 6.
Even a cursory search with keywords related to the NCR would reveal an impressive range and size of literature on the geographic area in and around Delhi.
- 7.
FAO = Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
- 8.
Obviously, the smaller spatial footprint of a high-rise apartment building does not compensate for the immense environmental and infrastructural footprints (in the form of water, sewage, garbage disposal, etc.) it adds to the equation.
- 9.
Statistically, the PCA model’s ability to handle collinearity helped the decision to include some variables with high inter-collinearity.
- 10.
A Discriminant Analysis was used to calculate the hit ratios as another indicator of the ‘validity of the cluster solutions’ (Hill et al. 1998, pp. 1944–1946) that are included at the bottom of the respective diagrams presenting the salient traits of the nested hierarchical clusters, as in 2001, 2011, and 2001–11 changes.
- 11.
To repeat a comment made in Sect. 6.3.1, although crop** intensity is generally considered to be a measure of efficient utilization of agricultural land, the long-term impact of increased crop** intensity on the soil appears to be uncertain and debatable (e.g., Verma et al. 2017). However, irrespective of the positions taken, sustainability implications of this practice on the agricultural future of megacity regions remain an important issue.
- 12.
Given that the three measures of density (population, household, and housing units per sq. km) increased in all the clusters over the decade, Cluster 5 experienced the smallest increase in all three measures.
- 13.
In this sense, the 120% average growth rate as shown in Table 6.8 masks the distinct growth dynamics of the two sole Priority Towns in this cluster.
- 14.
Manesar and Farruknagar were combined with Gurgaon for this study, hence they are not shown in Fig. 6.2.
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Mookherjee, D. (2020). The National Capital Region, Delhi, India: An Empirical Exploration. In: The Asian Megacity Region. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42649-1_6
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