New satellite imagery released by NASA shows a huge growth of Indian cities in recent years. Vast swaths of northern India, relatively dark in 2012 night shots, are lit up by large new urban areas in imagery from 2016.
According to the Oxford Economics Global City Forecast:
For Asia and the Pacific, fourteen of the twenty fastest growing cities in the 2015-19 period will be in India, led by Surat [in the western state of Gujarat], which is forecast to grow by 9.9% a year. That’s a remarkable figure: what is more, we expect that the subsequent period to 2030 will witness the same or even a little stronger growth, making it the strongest growing city in our global database.
CNN reports that the images of India are part of the “Earth at Night” program from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, which aims to provide “the clearest yet composite view of the patterns of human settlement across our planet.”
Last updated: December 26th, 2025
