What is the fastest growing city in the world?
What are the 4th, 11th or 13th fastest growing cities in the world? All these cities come from 1 state in India: Kerala.

According to estimates put out by The Economist, between 2015 & 2020, Malappuram in Kerala has grown by a whopping 44%. Kozhikode, Kollam & Thrissur – again, all 3 in Kerala, grew at breakneck speeds of 34%, 31% & 30% respectively.

The Economist, while putting out these stunning numbers, studied urban agglomerations around the city peripheries that can be captured by mapping built-up structures through satellite imagery. That means, you’re not waiting out till the next Census to know updated demographics. Instead, you can accurately track these numbers continually between the intervening years of decadal census.

We looked at some regions in North of India, in Uttar Pradesh (UP), to track such changes using temporal satellite imagery. Between 2005 & 2015 built-up area in UP grew from 9800 sq.km to 12300 sq.km. Urban areas grew faster at 33% than Rural areas at 22%. There is a divergence in growth when we compare districts. For instance, Lucknow built-up area grew by 40%, while Gorakhpur district in eastern UP grew by 108%.

Within Gorakhpur district, most of growth happened radially around the central part i.e. Gorakhpur city. This is captured in the growth of urban built-up area in Gorakhpur district which grew 20 percentage points faster than the aggregate rural built-up.

We can go even more granular and look at individual villages within Gorakhpur district. Between 2000 & 2020, we found some villages have grown over 100% and quite a few have grown above 25%.