The map below highlights an important but most promising opportunity in India's development trajectory. Across the country are thousands of emerging urban settlements with populations between 10,000 and 25,000.
These emerging urban areas occupy a unique position—they are closely connected to surrounding villages, agricultural landscapes, forests, grazing lands, and water bodies, while simultaneously possessing the potential to become centres of enterprise, services, education, healthcare, and innovation.
Unlike large cities, these small urban towns can evolve while retaining their rural character and ecological assets. The objective should be to create urban centres that grow with nature and a sustainable living by design. A distributed pattern of urbanisation would ease pressure on megacities by reducing overcrowding, traffic congestion, housing shortages, pollution, and the escalating costs of urban infrastructure. At the same time, stronger economic linkages between rural and urban areas would create new markets, making regional economies more resilient.
Physical infrastructure—including roads, electricity, quality housing, healthcare, education, logistics, and public transport—must be complemented with best of class digital infrastructure such as high-speed internet, digital public services, and shared digital platforms for higher order services to prosper. These towns also become nodes for supporting a catchment of 100 odd villages/25 Panchayats each, hosting whole lot of professional support to the entire area.
Strategic public investment can transform these settlements into attractive destinations for both people and enterprises. Such a model would create meaningful local employment opportunities for educated youth, reducing the compulsion to migrate to already congested metropolitan cities. Young professionals would be able to access modern workplaces without sacrificing family ties, community networks, cultural identity, or quality of life. Businesses, in turn, would benefit from lower operating costs, improved employee well-being, and access to a growing skilled workforce.
This imagination requires a paradigm shift in planning and governance—one that treats emerging urban places as regional growth centres embedded within living landscapes rather than isolated municipalities. Putting in place urban governance unit would be key for planning with Town Hall meetings to discuss key decisions. Town Hall meetings can shape the character and culture of the town. Key designs elements should imbibe 15 minutes facilities principles, planning must integrate composite land use, water security, commons governance, climate resilience, circular economy principles, and local economic development. Urbanisation should strengthen rather than weaken the ecological and social systems that sustain these regions.
