Urbanism: new outlook

Part One of the book presents an overall introduction, and a paper on the concept of semi-urban pocket. Whereas the general introduction outlines a brief history of development of this new outlook, the generic paper tries to explain the basic characteristics of the concept, and the rationale of its evolution. It may be mentioned that in terms of sequence, this paper was written quite some time after the completion of the case studies presented in later chapters. In fact, it was the direct outcome of the substantive findings of the case studies.

These case studies are included in Part Two of the book. As mentioned earlier, they were written at different points of time from ten districts of two states in northern India. The reader may, therefore, notice that the term rural semi-urban pocket, a sub-species of the core concept, is sparsely used in these chapters while referring to small and medium size towns. The last chapter in this group is a case study of historical developments of urban semi-urban pockets in Delhi city. It was written with the help of secondary sources of published and unpublished material, and supported by my own personal observations of various social areas in the city. This sub-species of the concept adds a new dimension to the core concept and widens the scope of conno tation and denotation of the concept.

In Part Three of the book, a group of four miscellaneous papers is included, the last one dealing with a tentative theory of urbanization in India. These papers were also written with the help of secondary data and are the outcome of my grow ing interest in applying the new conceptual framework to signi ficant areas of social change in India. It may be noted that the concluding chapter goes beyond the initial conceptual framework presented in the first chapter, although it retains unavoidable common features with the former. It tries to explain the causality of urbanization and social change with the help of two inter-related generalizations which have later proved to be the harbingers of further theoretical work on the subject.