City reaches for the sky as urban footprint lags

TALL BOOM | Population grew 56% between 1995 and 2025, while its urban area increased more slowly, at 43%, to 588sqkm.

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The Mumbai Metropolitan Region's urban imprint-the area covered by its buildings-grew at the slowest rate among eight major Indian urban agglomerations in the country over the last 30 years, indicating that the city is accommodating its growing population more through vertical expansion in taller buildings compared to other cities.

The findings are part of the recent study, Cities in Motion Tracing 30 Years of Urban Expansion in Key Indian Cities, by Square Yards, a real estate platform, which examined India's urbanisation landscape to analyse and compare the growth patterns of builtup areas within its major cities. The study used Landsat images from 1995 to 2025 and Global Human Settlement Layer data to estimate land use and built-up areas.