Urban Geography

Contents: Preface. 1. Introduction of Urban geography. 2. Contemporary urban issues. 3. Urban policy and planning. 4. Urban geography of India’s metropolitan cities. Bibliography. Index.

Urban geography is the study of urban places with reference to their geographical environment. Broadly speaking, the subject matter includes origin of towns, their growth and development, their functions in and around their surroundings. The subject of urban geography has gradually taken a special place among the various branches of geography in the period after the Second World War in various foreign and Indian Universities and Colleges. With the increase of population globally, towns and cities have become magnets of economic, social and political processes. The changes brought about by these processes have become instructive as well as interesting too in case of the single phenomenon, i.e., city in an spatial context. Under these circumstances, the studies of town and cities have formed an essential part of the branch of Human Geography. Industrialization has brought into being a large number of settlements which are not certainly villages but are nucleated settlements of agricultural population. Another problem is about the concept of what is urban, which is not static and is subject to change with time as well as with space. The present book provides an authoritative and stimulating global introduction to the study of towns and cities.