Urban Development in the Urban Fringe of the Delhi Metropolitan Region: A Case Study of Manesar, India

Abstract

Since its economic liberalization in 1991, the Indian economy has developed rapidly, particularly in the suburbs of the country’s metropolitan areas, which serve as its core. The suburban areas of the Delhi metropolitan region are undergoing development, as evidenced by the construction of industrial parks, office buildings, housing, and commercial malls for the new middle and wealthy classes. This study aims to clarify the prevailing situation and problems in the urban fringe of Delhi by investigating the actual conditions of housing supply and the characteristics of residents in Manesar, an extension city of Gurugram in the Delhi metropolitan area. The research target, Manesar, is managed by a village committee and is located 32 km south of the Indira Gandhi International Airport, adjacent to the south of Gurugram, which is rapidly developing as a suburban city of Delhi. Manesar is not a city or village but a ‘census town’, whose population size and socio-economic characteristics resemble that of a city. Manesar has been integrated into a city planning region alongside Gurugram in ‘The Gurgaon-Manesar Urban Complex Development Plan for 2021’. Large-scale factories, such as those of Japanese companies, have begun construction there to facilitate the region’s urban development. Field surveys were conducted in February 2016 and February 2017 regarding the status of the development in Sector 1, Manesar. The results revealed that 269 detached houses were constructed from among 536 plots, and 19 small apartments were built. There were 63 PGs (Paying Guest House, privately rented house) in the detached house blocks, and 19 group housings (which means condominiums or high-rise apartments in India) out of the 55 that had been planned were already completed. Among the detached housing blocks, there were many vacant plots and detached vacant houses. Totally over 30% were unused. Many owners of the vacant lands had no intention of living in Manesar and can be said to have acquired the land for speculative purposes. As for group housings, all of them in the area were cooperative housings. Typically, cooperative housings are built by ‘a housing society’, which organizes a housing association by gathering people who want to buy a house. However, in Manesar, several rental houses were present within the group housings. In Manesar, there are many vacant plots and vacant houses, because housing owners purchase plots and houses for investment. And many speculators manage the rental houses, because house’s price and rent are cheaper than Gurugram and Manesar is promising in near future for the plan of Delhi Metro. And there are many PG, because there are few restaurants and convenience facilities in Manesar. The most serious problem in Indian cites are land acquisition problems and overurbanization, which traditional villages surrounded by developed areas remain undeveloped in infrastructure.