Emerging trend in Spatial Pattern of Urbanization and Urban Growth in Western Himalayan Region, India

In Indian context, the Himalayas is bifurcated into the western and eastern Himalayan region by the presence of Nepal in between. Administratively, western Himalayan region is divided into Jammu&Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand. This region shows a thin and dispersed human population compared to national figures due to physiographic condition and poor infrastructural development. However, tourism and hotel industry is growing in this region and has become an important development issue. It also underpins urbanization (main component being rural-urban migration), which influences competence and capacity of local government in urban centres to ensure or encourage provision of infrastructure and services (including water, sanitation, drainage, transportation,etc). Therefore, the need of planned and organized urbanization has become a great concern as new urban areas have been added and proportion of urban population is increasing (Census, 2011). In this context, present paper aims to study the emerging pattern of urbanization, urban growth and its correlates in the states of western Himalayan region with reference to India, and to discern and analyze different patterns of urbanization and emergence of new towns/cities across districts of these states. For this study we have relied on Census data, RGI, 1981-2011.