Travel beyond the limits of any Indian city and you will find the dense urban neighbourhoods gradually give way to agricultural fields interspersed with industrial units, warehouses, gated colonies and new infrastructure corridors. These areas have a mix of urban and rural features: Four-lane highways interspersed with agricultural land with mixed habitations.

This shows that while cities expand, they absorb the villages that surround them, creating vast, rapidly changing landscapes that exist between the rural and the urban. These areas are lebelled as peri-urban zone, urban fringe, rurban areas, the rural–urban interface, transitional zones, city outskirts, census towns or urban villages.

Neither fully rural nor formally urban, yet they are home to millions of people living on the fringes of cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Chennai, as well as around numerous secondary and Class B cities.

India was 31.1 per cent urban according to the 2011 Census and is estimated to have reached roughly 36-37 per cent by 2024. The report titled Towards Resilient and Prosperous Cities in India stated that with India’s urban population expected to almost double by 2050 to 951 million.

Migration is a steady driver — government data suggested close to a fifth of all migration in 2020–21 was rural-to-urban. But much of this growth is not flowing into existing city limits. It is pooling at the edges. The World Bank estimated that nearly 70 per cent of the urban infrastructure India will need by 2047 does not yet exist, this infrastructure will be built on the margins of the city leading to the peri-urban zones getting urbanised.

As of the 2011 Census, India recognised over 3,800 Census Towns. These areas are administrative anomalies — settlements that are legally classified and governed as rural villages, yet possess distinct urban characteristics (such as population density and a largely non-agricultural workforce). They serve as a primary example of peri-urban growth.

By some estimates, close to 30 per cent of India's urban population now lives in settlements with no formal urban institution to govern them, and on current trends the census-town count could reach 8,500–9,500 by 2031.

However peri-urban areas don’t restrict to the census towns. Tens of thousands of villages across the country have become functionally peri-urban due to their proximity to economic hubs. These settlements typically fall within a 5-20-kilometre radius of major cities, or lie directly along expanding industrial corridors and metropolitan regions.

Because these spaces lack a formal statutory definition, they often fall into a governance vacuum — frequently missing out on both the robust rural development funds and the structured urban planning infrastructure they urgently need.

Bengaluru is a good case. Studies of its periphery have documented around 65 per cent of peri-urban land shifting from agriculture to mixed-use and commercial purposes, concentrated in fringe wards such as Yelahanka, Byatarayanapura and the Kempegowda belt; the NH-7 corridor and metro expansion spurred sprawl while public transport made daily commuting from the outskirts viable.

The growth is driven by a familiar push-and-pull. Inside the city, high land and housing prices, congestion, pollution and overstretched services push people outward; on the fringe, cheaper land, room to build, proximity to jobs and better connectivity pull them in. Highways, ring roads, metro extensions and industrial corridors then act as accelerants, converting farmland into mixed-use sprawl along their length.

Why should this command attention? Because peri-urban areas are simultaneously the fastest-growing, most environmentally stressed, most critical to sustainable urbanisation, and least researched parts of the urban system. They are where the city's future footprint is laid down — usually without a plan.

WASH service delivery in peri-urban areas

The Centre for Science and Environment with Tata Trusts studied recently transitioned peri-urban areas of Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh — villages absorbed into the city's expanding limits — to understand what happens to WASH services during that handover. The study revealed that households in these settlements had limited access to a safe, reliable water supply.

Sewerage was largely absent or inadequate, leaving residents dependent on on-site systems — septic tanks and pits — that were poorly built and worse maintained. Critically, there was little or no structured faecal sludge management to empty, transport and treat what those systems collect, turning a containment problem into an environmental and public-health hazard.

Intra-settlement inequalities were significantly visible: Within the same newly urbanised area, some pockets received partial services while others remained entirely underserved. Institutional ambiguity arising due to unclear, overlapping roles between rural and urban local bodies that produced fragmented delivery and weak accountability.

What experts Say: From recognition to action

Discussing these issues with a panel of senior planners and governance specialists convened by CSE, a few important learnings emerged for seamless peri-urban integration in urban areas.

The panel stressed the need for proactive regional planning, shifting away from reactive measures towards regional planning frameworks that extend beyond rigid municipal boundaries. This could involve borrowing successful elements from states such as Gujarat.

Another key learning was the importance of granular data collection. The persistent lack of reliable, disaggregated data currently leads to a chronic underestimation of community needs and the misallocation of infrastructure funds, highlighting the need for stronger data systems.

The discussion also underscored the need for decentralised WASH infrastructure. Conventional, centralised sewerage networks are frequently impractical at the urban fringe, making decentralised sanitation systems and robust faecal sludge management the more realistic solutions.

Finally, the panel highlighted the importance of empowered governance and accountability. This requires strengthening the links between duty-bearers and citizens by legally empowering local planning bodies, such as District Planning Committees, and ensuring communities — especially women and the urban poor — are treated as co-design partners rather than passive beneficiaries.

Peri-urban areas areas are an important urban agenda for the coming decade. The villages being absorbed at the edge of every Indian city today will define what those cities look like and will help cities to sustain, and how well they serve their people, for a generation. The choice between planning for that transition proactively or reactively, will define the future of our cities.

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