Characteristics and Consequences of Urbanization in India's North East: A Case of Shillong

The term urbanization is well explained by Nsiah-Gyabaah as the change from a rural to an urban society which involves an argument in the number of people in urban regions during a particular year. Likewise, Gooden argued urbanization as the immigration of people in huge numbers from rural to urban areas and this process happen due to the concentration of resources and facilities in towns and cities. Other theorists like Reynolds (1985), characterized urbanization as the development of the population and cities, so that higher proportion of populations living in urban areas. Normally, urbanization is directly associated with innovation, industrialization, and the sociological process. In India, urbanization process in urban areas is triggered, when workforce moved towards manufacturing hubs in cities to get jobs in factories which demonstrates that Urbanization is the result of social, economic and political developments that lead to urban concentration and expansion of big cities, changes in landuse and revolution from rural to urban pattern of organization and governance, but as in the case of Shillong urbanization process revolved around educational and administration set up since British period. Thus in the light of the above, the present paper will explore and examine the characteristics of urbanization in the study area and it will further accentuate into the effect and consequences that rapid urbanization has finally shaped the city to the present.