Urban sprawl is a never ending process and is acting as a major challenge while dealing with the development of mega cities in the country. The driving force behind the creation of satellite town is deal with the issue of urban sprawl with unplanned dormitory settlements.

Satellite town
Satellite town/city is a concept of urban planning. It is self-contained and limited in size, built in the vicinity of a large metro city. These are smaller municipalities that are designed to stop urban sprawl to the suburbs and to supplement and aid the large city’s planned expansion. Some live examples in India are metropolitan regions of NCR, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai.

Satellite towns differ from suburbs as they are separated from the central city by many kilometers. Little commuting activity but closely geared economic activity to those of central city is one of the major difference. On the other hand suburbs are joined with the center for commuting to or from the city.
All the satellite cities are aimed to accommodate the over urbanization of mega cities and to open new investment opportunities to manufacturing as well as service sector industries.

Objectives of Satellite Towns-

1. Decongestion: Metro congestion is one of the major issues faced due to too many cars and too many people. For instance, Gurgaon and Noida-satellite towns are quite successful against urban congestion in Delhi. They absorb huge amount of in migration. These towns offer best chances to migrants to have proper housing, financial opportunities, and ecological consciousness, ethnic and social liberties. In other words decongestion of people can be said as ‘Density Optimization’.
2. Economic Sub center: Metro cities act as a magnet of investments. The emergence of small and medium enterprises around the core of metropolitan area boosts the investment opportunities. It may come out as a sub center for major metropolitans.
3. Optimum utilization of Land: Land is the most important and limited resource available. The need of the time is to give equal opportunities to the neighboring areas and also optimal use of regional resources for physical upliftment of the region.
4. Ecology and Environment: Degradation of environment and urbanization are interconnected. Faster a city grows more the deterioration of its air and water quality will be seen. Major reason is the loss of green cover and instigation of concrete jungles. Satellite towns may act as a solution against the concentration factors of degradation. Tree plantation, water conservation, recycles and reuse in peripheral and core areas will add to save the degradation of ecology.
5. Converting Labor Force to Work force-Equal opportunities to the labor force are necessary for the comprehensive development of a region as well as the nation. Unemployed, poor migrants, seasonal unemployed agriculture labor can be vital in various manufacturing and construction industries in the surrounding areas. This objective can be successfully achieved with creation of employment in small and medium enterprises.
6. Economy: Satellite towns in the periphery of the major metro will bring new options for the financial investment. The potential of satellite town for regional growth with proper resource utilization is more optimum and beneficial to humans  

Government Initiatives

Governments program such as ‘Urban Planning Initiatives’, ‘Smart Cities Mission’, are aimed at growth of Urban Satellite town in India. ‘Smart Cities Mission’2015 has announced 27 new cities around the country.

In addition to it, almost all the metropolitan cities are having towns serving as satellite towns; still proper planning and resource allocation is required to have desired outcomes from the peripheries. For instance, around Delhi, there are urban centers performing the services of satellite towns, e.g. Ghaziabad, Bhadurgarh, Faridabad, Sonipat, Gurgaon, Noida. Similarly around Kolkata, Kalyani, Barakhpur, Jadavpur, etc. several peripheral towns are closely linked with the city.
In the end, government of India has a vision of modernizing the existing mid-sized cities into satellite towns of larger cities.