URBANIZATION IN KARNATAKA; A GEOGRAPHICAL APPROACH

Urbanization is a world-wide process and it is a cause and effect of heightened economic progress in a region. It plays an enormous role in social transformation and economic mobility all over the world. In fact, the process and level of urbanization has been transforming the developing countries from 'countries of villages' to 'countries of towns and cities'. With 31.16 percent urbanites lived in 2011, India is at a low level of urbanization compared with the developed nations. There exists large inter-regional disparities in different parts of the nation as far as level of urbanization is concerned. The present paper is an attempt to study the trends, degrees and tempo of urbanization and urban morphology in Karnataka from 1901 to 2011. It is the 7th largest state in India with 38.67 percent of urbanites living in 347 towns and cities as of 2011, which is 7.51 points above the national average in terms of urbanization and plays a signicant role in the state's as well as country's economy and progress of IT and BT sector. The paper is an effort to analyses the regional disparity in the process and level of urbanization among the districts of the state from 1991 to 2011. Finally, the study also enlightens the socio-economic consequences of this inter-regional disparity in urbanization in Karnataka. Present study is mainly based on the secondary sources of data and is collected from Indian Census Handbooks of Karnataka and other related reports. After collecting data, these were analysed in a suitable manner by using appropriate statistical and cartographic techniques. Results show that the state exhibits a uctuating trend in level of urbanization with a high regional variation and a high disparity in the concentration of urbanities. Disparities exist at the levels of urbanization in state shown that, Bangalore is the most urbanized district with 90.94 percent followed by Dharwad (56.82 percent) district and on the other end of this scale Kodagu with 14.61 percent, was the least urbanized district in the state. 78.24 percent of urbanities lived in only 19 percent of urban centres and the remaining 81 percent of towns contained only 21.76 percent of the state's urbanities. Thus, urbanization in Karnataka is a by-product of the demographic explosion, poverty encouraged rural-urban migration and reclassication of towns and it also reects uneven economic progresses across the state and needs special attention.