Kanpur is a million + City & its most populated urban agglomeration in Uttar Pradesh. As per Census 2011 following area falls under Kanpur Urban Agglomeration: Kanpur Municipal Corporation, Rawatpur Station Yard, Central Railway Colony, Kanpur Cantonment, Armapur Estate, Northern Railway Colony, and Chakehri. Kanpur urban agglomeration population is 29.2 Lakhs spread over an area of over 260 sq. km. Kanpur Municipal Corporation occupying a 230 sq km area with a population of 27.67 Lakhs

Kanpur Municipal Corporation (KMC) is divided into 6 zones and 110 wards. All the zones except No. 6 have 18 wards each. The zones size ranging from 7.67 sq. km in Zone 1 to 93.83 sq. km in Zone 2.  More than 70% of residential areas are unplanned in Zones 1, 2, and 4. Zones 1 and 4 are small in size, largely unplanned, contain very high general residential and slum population density. 35% of the cities’ population resides in 7.7% area of these zones. On the other hand, 93.83 sq. km i.e., 40.9% of the total area of the municipal corporation is comprised of Zone 2, which supports a large number of rural settlements along with agricultural areas. 

The most dominant land use category is residential closely followed by agricultural land. Both these categories comprise nearly 70% of the total land use. These are followed by vacant land (7.10%), industrial area (6.86%), and transport (2.87%). The residential area spreads over 89.09 km2 (38.73% area) and includes mixed built-up as well as rural built-up areas. The old city center and neighborhoods have very high population density.