The current economic growth in India has spearheaded the new phenomena of the dramatic shift in population to urban centres. 11 Indian cities figure in the 100 fastest growing cities in the world. Faridabad occupies the sixth spot.

A report ‘The Transition to a Predominantly Urban World and its Underpinnings’, released by the International Institute for Environment and Development, a UK-based policy research non-governmental body has revealed this fact.

Even little-known smaller Indian cities are emerging as big success stories. Durg-Bhilai in Chhattisgarh, home to a massive steel plant, is the seventh fastest growing city in the world, according to the report. Another NCR city in the reckoning is Ghaziabad.

Other cities finding place in the top 100 list has thrown up surprises, including Aurangabad, Bhopal, Chandigarh, Dhanbad, Surat, Guwahati, Visakhapatnam and Asansol. The four metros along with Pune, Hyderabad and Bangalore appear in the most populated cities list.

The underlying economic drivers pushing population shift are peculiar to the cities and hence diverse. India is second only to China and the way the two nations are reaping economic success, they may well surpass urban populations in 2020 predicted by the United Nations, the report says.

They may accommodate most of the world’s growth in population between now and 2020. The report shows that the world’s urban population has multiplied 10-fold during the 20th century and most of this growth is now taking place in such as India.

Defying older trends are a huge number of cities experiencing unprecedented rate of growth in urban populations. Africa has more people living in urban areas than North America.

The authors of the report presage that these migrations may dictate global consumption patterns. Also, the implications in terms of economic development, poverty reduction and energy consumption are immense.

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