Urbanization from within

Urbanization is usually narrated as a tale of migration – mass migration from rural areas to swelling cities. But the proliferation and growth of cities in the 21st century will not only result from this classic force of urbanization. There is another kind of urbanization unfolding: the transformation of agrarian villages into urban towns by the force of internal population growth and the organic evolution of the built environment, the local economy, and people’s livelihoods and lifestyles. While it is nothing novel for new cities to grow out of once-rural landscapes, this phenomenon is now occurring in unprecedented ways—without the influx of migrants from elsewhere or the kind of state interventions that produce planned new towns. I call this process “urbanization from within,” and I study its causes and consequences through case studies in India.