The idea of Tier I to VI cities was originally developed by the government to calculate employee benefits such as house rent, dearness allowance based on the population size of settlements. Though this classification is no longer officially used, the categories continue in real estate and development circles, where they are defined by land value and population. The seven metropolitan cities remain Tier I, while many smaller state capitals and towns are classified as Tier II, reflecting their investment and land-value potential. Housing markets are a key driver of this hierarchical categorisation, which has since extended into development finance and real estate planning.
In its present form, the category of Tier II cities is largely defined by exclusion, emerging from a hierarchy anchored in metropolitan centres. Land markets, investment recovery potential and flexible negotiation environments characterise Tier II and Tier III cities.
When land markets become saturated in big cities, investment shifts towards Tier II cities, driving infrastructure growth through wider road networks, metro systems, and new investments in hospitals, hotels and housing. Growth is driven not by the needs of these cities but by external capital pressures, including global financial flows. Local administrations are often ill-equipped to manage these pressures, while the political class is eager to facilitate land-use changes and land transactions.
The master planning process has been practised in India for decades and is ideally based on extensive local surveys, public hearings and people’s participation. Needs are assessed through planning standards and regional plan provisions. Tier-based hierarchies are never a criterion in plan preparation. Plans are not driven by financial considerations and typically follow similar physical patterns from city to city, with ring roads, designated industrial land use and broadly density-driven housing. In most cases, external pressures for housing and infrastructure fall outside the planning framework, resulting in forced land-use changes and new movement networks. Participatory planning and public hearings are often undermined by these externally driven capital pressures.
Though the 74th Constitutional Amendment clearly lays out a method for plan preparation, investment decisions follow a different logic, detached from the priorities of elected local bodies. When the Constitution vests development planning in local government, an externally generated hierarchy such as the Tier II city construct works against a locally rooted, need-based model of development. Instead of neighbourhood health centres across the city, what gets built may be a super-specialty hospital; instead of tot lots, a large stadium. Available land becomes the basis for new housing, when what is needed is a strategic programme of inner-city renewal. The relationship between Tier I and Tier II cities remains colonial, as impatient capital continually seeks new pastures.
Barring Chandigarh and Gandhinagar, almost every Tier II city contains an embedded old city, pre-industrial in origin and part of settlement networks shaped by functional needs rather than investment hierarchies.
Centuries-old urban centres are classified as Tier II and Tier III, from which migration to larger cities has long been the norm. Human Development Index scores remain low, social amenities are inadequate and environmental degradation grows, while land remains underutilised. Former pilgrimage centres, abandoned capitals, trading hubs, and centres of traditional learning, music, performing arts, toy-making and painting are languishing across India in the absence of an equity-based urban development strategy. Relegation to a lower hierarchy only deepens this neglect.
From the perspective of the climate crisis, an existing building is the most sustainable one; an existing city is the most sustainable city. They demand no new resources. Conserving India’s existing urban centres and arresting outmigration is no longer a romantic obsession with the past. Rather, it is an urgent necessity that helps address the climate crisis, stabilise local populations and protect India’s age-old cultures.
The Smart Cities Mission began as a plan for 100 new cities, but soon gave way to the more modest goal of upgrading 100 existing ones. Ground realities and limited local implementation capacity reduced the programme to its third avatar: 100 selected areas within those cities. The mission ended with thousands of crores unspent, while the maintenance of these interventions and their impact on urban structure remain unevaluated. In the process, a major opportunity was lost to revive India’s heritage cities through planned regeneration and the intelligent use of technology.
If India’s planners continue to cling to 19th-century notions of road widening and industry-centric development, the climate crisis will soon find a formidable ally in industry itself. Can we instead open a new discourse on preserving India’s rich urban traditions through the conservation of existing cities and the intelligent use of technology? Can we turn impending digital disruptions into opportunities for urban conservation?
If India’s old cities (read Tier II and Tier III cities) are reimagined as future-ready spaces, more people would choose to remain in them, allowing their intrinsic values to be nurtured. Many urban design principles—including density of form, shaded vehicle-free movement, mixed use and sustainable built form—are already embedded in these old cities. Their inadequacies relate mainly to parking and vehicular access, modern sanitation and waste-disposal systems, and inadequate social infrastructure. All of these can be addressed through intelligent design and effective adaptive reuse. Many old cities remain poorly mapped and suffer from unreliable power supply. Through a mission-mode approach across India, these deficiencies can be remedied at a fraction of the cost and with far lower resource use.
Urban conservation has received only a fraction of the attention devoted to planning and urban design. Digitisation offers an opportunity to strengthen historic urban fabric through digital infrastructure and reliable electricity. Such interventions would immediately raise land values while helping resolve fragmented ownership patterns. The State must lead. Unlike the industrial revolution, the digital revolution is less physically invasive in historic cities. Smart City-II should be directed exclusively towards Tier II and Tier III cities, combining climate mitigation, heritage protection and income opportunities.
K T Ravindran | Urban designer and former Chairman of the Delhi Urban Art Commission
(Views are personal)