Abstract
The emergence of 528 new Census Towns (CTs) in 2011 and their contribution to the growth of urban population brought significant changes in the nature of urbanization in West Bengal, a state in India. This present treatise made an effort to see the locational distribution of these new CTs with respect to Class I towns/cities in each district of West Bengal in quest of the contesting views of concentrated and dispersed urbanization using multiple ring buffers with varying radial distances and a robustness check. Number of new CTs and their population fall within and outside the buffers has counted to assess the intra-state nature of concentrated and dispersed urbanization. The study further examines Centrality Value, using eight nodal services to make a four-tier hierarchical order of new CTs so as to find out the places of eminence in terms of available institutional services. Results show that in highly urbanized districts, non-urban places close to Class I towns have transformed rapidly into urban and symbolized concentrated urbanization. Whereas in low urbanized districts, this kind of transformation can be observed for places located away from Class I towns which can be explained by their functional importance as rural service centres in general. This brought dispersed urbanization in the state, particularly in low urbanized districts. Although, higher order new CTs could be a viable option to develop subsidiary urban centres for the future, particularly in low urbanized districts of the state. Key words: Census towns (CTs), Class I towns, concentrated and dispersed urbanization, Centrality Value, Hierarchical Order, Rural Service Centre.
Highlights
It is an unquestionable reality that at present, the world is urbanizing at a swift pace
As we already have pointed out that, places rural areas nearer to cities perhaps transform more quickly to turn into „census town‟, it is essential to see their locational distribution in order to observe whether there is concentrated or dispersed urban development is taking place around Class I towns in different districts of the state
The results show that about 38% of new Census Towns (CTs) of different functional orders are located within the proximity to Class I towns and majority of them are outside the proximity to Class I towns in different districts of West Bengal
Summary
It is an unquestionable reality that at present, the world is urbanizing at a swift pace. This shift of the course of urbanization is marked with concentration as more and more population crowding in large cities of developing nations (Henderson, 2002). It illustrates distinctiveness (Bhattacharya, 2002) and rapid urbanization in many developing countries today (Henderson, 2002). Urbanization scenario of India has always been featured with „urban primacy‟ that is concentration of the urban population mainly in cities† with population 100,000 and above (Kundu, 2011), coupled with considerable fall of population share in small towns‡ (Bhagat and Mohanty, 2008). Regional distribution of urban population of India is another expression of concentration as about half of the country‟s urban population resides in the six most urbanized states, namely, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Punjab and West Bengal (Sivaramakrishnan et al, 2011)
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