The city of Pune has been the most rapidly expanding urban centre in major India cities over the past three decades, with a 332 per cent rise in its built-up area between 1995 and 2025, as per a recent study by the real estate platform Square Yards. The report was named Cities in Motion: Tracing 30 Years of Urban Expansion in the Major Indian Cities and involved satellite photography to determine the increase in land area occupied by man-made buildings.
It reveals that the urban footprint of Pune had shot up to 373 sq km in 2025; in comparison, it was 86 sq km in 1995. Pune has evolved into a booming technology and manufacturing centre after being perceived largely as an education centre. This transformation triggered the scale of residential and commercial real estate development to take the city fringe to extremes, thrusting it in several directions and causing it to become one of the most appealing urban centres in India.
The second rapid growth was experienced in Bengaluru, the so-called technology capital of the country, where the built-up area increased by a rapid 186 per cent between 1995 and 2025, to reach 498 sq km. The IT boom and international airport development, as well as large-scale infrastructure schemes like the Outer Ring Road and Namma Metro, overcame new real estate corridors and spurred peri-urban growth.
Chennai was at the third spot with a 137 per cent expansion in the urban area, 197 sq km in 1995, up to 467 sq km in 2025. Chennai experienced growth due to the success of the automobile, electronics, IT and logistics sectors, which were augmented by remote infrastructure developments such as the Outer Ring Road and the Chennai-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor.
In the meantime, the already largest urban agglomeration in India, Delhi NCR, expanded steadily, by 400 sq km (71% increase) to 967 sq km. Hyderabad increased its built-up area by nearly 500 sq km (almost 0.4 times), and Ahmedabad by 102 per cent to 285 sq km.
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