Class and Size wise Distribution of Urban Centre and their Determinants in Maharashtra

Urbanization in Indian is not rapid but massive. In order to plan for balanced and integrated development of the state. Potential cities and towns should be developed to their optimum capacity. There are several studies that have investigated the determinants of urbanization in Maharashtra by considering all the cities and towns together or only large cities, this paper tries to investigate it by considering different class or towns of cities of major separately. Urbanization is conventionally measured by size and growth of city population. India is urbanization rapidly and about 377 million people live in 7935 towns and cities, across the country which constitutes about 31.2 per cent of the total population. The number of towns has significantly increased from 2219 in 1951 to 7935 in 2011. There is high inequality in the distribution of the urban population by size class categories. About 70 per cent of the total urban population lives in 468 towns in Indian. Maharashtra is urbanizing rapidly and about 45.23 per cent population live in 536 towns and cities. The number of towns has significantly increased from 237 in 1961 to 536 in 2011. About 76.67 per cent of the total urban population lives in class I cities or towns i.e. 44 in Maharashtra. The contribution of Class I cities to the total urban population of Maharashtra was only 6.32 percent in the beginning of the present century (1961), which steadily increased to 8.21 in 2011. The Class I cities are growing at a much faster rate and their contribution to the progress of urbanization is overwhelming.