Zirakpur is a satellite town of Chandigarh located in the Punjab(Distt. Mohali). It is set on the foothills of Shivalik hills. It is part of the tehsil Dera Bassi. After assessing cities on the basis of five key parameters — real estate, people, physical infrastructure, social infrastructure and business environment — a recent study concluded that India’s hottest emerging city is Chandigarh. India's first planned city got top ranking for the potential of its real estate market, physical infrastructure and business environment. While there is little space left within the city itself, Chandigarh scores because of the rapid development taking place on its outskirts, in areas like Panchkula, Mohali, Zirakpur and Dera Bassi on the Chandigarh-Ambala highway. Good connectivity, low operational costs and high disposable income also contributed to it being declared India’s hottest emerging city.

Zirakpur got its name from a small village, which is now a part of the present Zirakpur town. For long it remained a bunch of small villages located along the Chandigarh-Ambala highway. Then Chandigarh started to expand and these villages started to seem like a part of Chandigarh. Before the year 2000, the city had a population of less than twenty thousand. Soon a small village Baltana, which is a part of Zirakpur now, started having some population growth being near to Panchkula and Chandigarh. From 2004 ownwards the city's population started to increase rapidly, with booming property prices and the arrival of a large number of residential projects in the suburbs. The city's estimated population as of 2010 is nearly 1.5 lacs.