The burgeoning intricacy of urban landscapes has accentuated the necessity of comprehensive study. These are vital for illuminating sustainable growth paths, grasping socio-economic interplays, and permitting educated urban policy decisions. Guided by this imperative, the current research employs the LandsatLANDSAT satellite series data to present an in-depth geospatial investigation of urbanizationUrbanization patterns observed within three cardinal municipal corporations in Maharashtra, India, namely the PunePune Municipal Corporation (PMC), Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC), and NashikNashik Municipal Corporation (NMC) over the span of 2001–2021. The findings unambiguously identify a significant augmentation in urban built-up regions, frequently at the expense of other land useLand use classifications. Of the three, NMC experienced the most pronounced spatial increase, accounting for an additional 78.87 km2, while PMC and PCMC witnessed additions of 64.14 km2. and 40.17 km2, respectively. In absolute spatial terms, PMC manifests as the central urban expanse with a sprawl of 189.34 km2, succeeded by NMC at 137.51 km2. and PCMC at 105.71 km2. Furthermore, a period of increasing urban sprawl was evident across the municipalities during the 2006–2011 intervals. Spatial landscape metricsLandscape metrics point to the type of urban landscape fragmentation, the compactness of cities, and the degree of sprawl characteristics. The results show that the built-up in the urban landscapes shows landscape fragmentation into small patches that happened on a large scale, indicating sprawl during the study period.