Spatial Disparities, Transport Infrastructure, and Decentralization Policy in the Delhi Region

Spatial-development policies in India have aimed to achieve balanced regional development. However, these attempts have had limited success, as development is still concentrated in certain large urban areas. For that reason, sustainably accommodating the country’s projected population increase remains a challenge. Taking the Delhi National Capital Region (NCR) as a case study and utilizing digitized tehsil boundaries and transport networks from regional plans, along with the recently released 2011 census enumeration, this paper investigates both recent settlement developments and the influence of the transport infrastructure on balanced regional development. The results reveal that population growth is concentrated in and around Delhi. A positive relationship has been established between the provision of major road infrastructure and employment growth in the peripheral areas. According to current trends, reducing disparities will require a mix of top-down and bottom-up approaches to enforce infrastructure-integrated spatial development and to strengthen the regional and local authorities to facilitate plan formulation and implementation.