Virar is a coastal city in taluka Vasai and district of Palghar. It is clubbed into Vasai-Virar city, administered by Vasai-Virar Municipal Corporation. It lies north to the city of Mumbai. It is a part of the outermost Mumbai Metropolitan Region.

Virar railway station is one of the prominent railway station on the Western Line of Mumbai Suburban Railway due to being the northern-most station on the line with high frequency of local-train transit.

Virar City is governed by Municipal Corporation and is situated in Maharashtra State/UT. As per provisional reports if Census India, population of Virar in 2011 is 1,222,390; of which male and female are 648,172 and 574,218 respectively.

The growth of Virar is yet to be seen in full as the quadrupling of the railway line between Borivali and Virar has just taken place in 2007. The railways are still pleading the lack of sufficient number of rakes to take full advantage of the quadrupling.

The city has seen a lot of development in the past 5 years. The Municipal Council was upgraded to Vasai-Virar Municipal Corporation in May 2009. There are various housing and road transport development projects initiated by the corporation with the help of MMRDA, Mumbai. The skywalk in the west section of the city was one of the first amongst the many skywalks that were built near all the railway stations of Mumbai.

 It was the seventh skywalk in the city and it cost INR 91.5 million. Virar-West skywalk is 589 meters long with four meters wide walkway. The skywalk was found to be the busiest amongst the others built by the MMRDA by recording a footfall of 58,038 commuters during peak hours. It was followed by Santa Cruz skywalk with a figure of 37,546.

The Virar East skywalk is uniquely built as it goes right over the Totale lake, situated in the backdrop of the huge VVMC corporation building. A viewing tourist gallery is built in the middle of the 285 m long skywalk.

Virar-Alibaug Corridor Project is a project undertaken by the MMRDA. The Rs 10,000-crore project is expected to provide seamless connectivity by the metro as well as by road from Alibaug to Virar. The corridor will bypass the western and eastern suburbs and also the routes which will witness growth in the future. 

The proposed alignment will connect four crucial national highways, NH8 (Mumbai-Ahmedabad), NH3 (Mumbai-Agra-Delhi), NH4 (Mumbai-Chennai) and NH17 (Goa-Mangalore-Kerala). The MMRDA has claimed that the 140-km corridor will reduce the long commute to barely an hour. Phase-I of the corridor will be of 90 km from Virar to Panvel. Phase-II will be of 50 km from Panvel to Alibaug.