Missing millions: undercounting urbanization in India

• Published in: Population and environment Vol. 41; no. 2; pp. 126 - 150
• Main Authors: Onda, Kyle, Sinha, Parmanand, Gaughan, Andrea E., Stevens, Forrest R., Kaza, Nikhil
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01.12.2019; Springer Netherlands; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Algorithms; Censuses; Clustering; Demography; Environment; Measurement; Original Paper; Population; Population (statistical); Population Economics; Public Health; Public officials; Social Sciences; Sociology; Urban areas; Urban population; Urban populations; Urbanization; India; Urbanization; Urban-rural delineation; Gridded population data; Urban agglomerations; India
• ISSN: 0199-0039; 1573-7810
• DOI: 10.1007/s11111-019-00329-2

The measurement and characterization of urbanization crucially depends upon defining what counts as urban. The government of India estimates that only 31% of the population is urban. We show that this is an artifact of the definition of urbanity and an underestimate of the level of urbanization in India. We use a random forest-based model to create a high-resolution (~ 100 m) population grid from district-level data available from the Indian Census for 2001 and 2011, a novel application of such methods to create temporally consistent population grids. We then apply a community-detection clustering algorithm to construct urban agglomerations for the entire country. Compared with the 2011 official statistics, we estimate 12% more of urban population, but find fewer mid-size cities. We also identify urban agglomerations that span jurisdictional boundaries across large portions of Kerala and the Gangetic Plain.