A review of recent urban geographic studies in India

Abstract

This paper reviews the changing nature of the growing specialized trends of urban geography in India since independence, with a particular emphasis to the 1980s and early 1990s. Urban geography has emerged as a major academic sub-field in India with active researchers at its frontier. The 1980s and early 1990s are characterized by a diversified and growing trend of specialization both in inter-urban and intra-urban research in urban geography. This diversification is most clear and pronounced in intra-urban studies where the emphasis is directed towards socio-cultural aspects of the city. Conversely, inter-urban research is concerned both with analysis of patterns and trends of macro level urbanization and the processes. Although model building is in its infancy, a few static, deterministic, probabilistic and dynamic models have been constructed. There has been severe limitations in the use of computers in India, particularly the large-frame ones, so the researcher there cannot use the large scale data on national level.