Urbanization - The Last Ten Years

This video is an attempt to showcase the fast pace of urbanization in India in the past ten years (2003 - 2013). I have created the video using historical imagery from Google Earth. The selected location is at the outskirts of Mumbai on the Mumbai-Nasik highway. This region has seen the fastest and most intense development in the last ten years, mostly high-rise residential towers.

Rapid and un-checked development has also resulted in massive destruction of forest cover, mangroves and conversion of fertile agricultural land to build-able land. You can clearly see the drastic change between the years 2009 and 2011, when the residential development market peaked before the slowdown.

This stretch of highway between Mumbai and Nasik is undergoing massive urbanization with well-known developers on the scene now. The next phase of urban development is already taking place on these fringes and reminds me of the phenomenon of "Edge Cities" put forth by Joel Garreau. My next blog will talk a bit more about the phenomenon of Edge Cities in India which remains largely under the radar of planners, urban designers and academicians in India.

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