The growth of Mumbai city is constrained by the sea from three ends & Suburb districts at the North end. As a limited land area available for development, planners, in late 1960, started exploiting alternatives for dispersal and control of the Mumbai population. Eminent architects, Charles Coria, Shirish Patel, and Pravin Mehta suggested Navi Mumbai as an alternative to Mumbai. 

The history of the development of the current city of Navi Mumbai started with The Government of Maharashtra designated site for New town of Navi Mumbai Notification dated 20th March 1971 and City Industrial Development Corporation Limited (CIDCO), has been appointed as a New Town Development Authority. CIDCO prepared a developmental plan for Navi Mumbai covering 95 villages from Thane and Raigad district covering a total area of 343.70 sq km. This was approved by the Government of Maharashtra in August 1979.

Government of Maharashtra vide Notification dated 18th January 1980 has sanctioned the draft Development Plan in the form of structure plan, prepared and submitted by CIDCO for the area comprised in the New Town of Navi Mumbai and the same has come into force with effect from 1st March 1980.

For catering to the requirements of these areas, Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation has been constituted on dated 17th December 1991 for the local areas of 29 revenue villages & developed nodes of Vashi, Sanpada, Nerul, Belapur-CBD, Koperkhairane, and Airoli  & added om 29th July 2008 node of Ghansoli comprising of revenue villages of Ghansoli, Rabale, Gothivali, Talvali

Out of the Planned total area of 343.70 sq km for Navi Mumbai, only 108.638 sq km area is under NMMC.  The new town project consists of 14 nodes; Airoli, CBD Belapur, Kopar Khairane, Nerul, Sanpada, Vashi, Dronagiri, Kalamboli, Kharghar, New Panvel, Ghansoli, Kalamboli (warehousing), Jui Kamothe and Ulwe. The  NMMC area has seven nodes &  30 + Villages or Gaothan falls under it.

* The Navi Mumbai region has developed around 95 revenue villages and around 100 gaothans in Thane, Panvel and Uran talukas. A typical gaothan includes the core village and surrounding areas which include lands acquired by CIDCO.