Urbanization and agricultural land loss in India: comparing satellite estimates with census data.

Urbanization often occurs in an unplanned and uneven manner, resulting in profound changes in patterns of land cover and land use. Understanding these changes is fundamental for devising environmentally responsible approaches to economic development in the rapidly urbanizing countries of the emerging world. One indicator of urbanization is built-up land cover that can be detected and quantified at scale using satellite imagery and cloud-based computational platforms. This process requires reliable and comprehensive ground-truth data for supervised classification and for validation of classification products. We present a new dataset for India, consisting of 21,030 polygons from across the country that were manually classified as “built-up” or “not built-up,” which we use for supervised image classification and detection of urban areas. As a large and geographically diverse country that has been undergoing an urban transition, India represents an ideal context to develop and test approaches for the detection of features related to urbanization. We perform the analysis in Google Earth Engine (GEE) using three types of classifiers, based on imagery from Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 as inputs. The methodology produces high-quality maps of built-up areas across space and time. Although the dataset can facilitate supervised image classification in any platform, we highlight its potential use in GEE for temporal large-scale analysis of the urbanization process. Our methodology can easily be applied to other countries and regions.

Detecting the Boundaries of Urban Areas in India: A Dataset for Pixel-Based Image Classification in Google Earth Engine

The world has seen the development and growth of urban areas at a faster pace. The rapid urban growth and development have resulted in the increase in the share of India’s urban population from 79 million in 1961 that was about 17.92 percent of India’s total population to 388 million in 2011 that is 31.30 percent of India’s total population. This fast rate of increase in urban population is mainly due to large scale migration of people from rural and smaller towns to bigger cities in search of better employment opportunities and better quality of life. Urban sprawl has resulted in loss of productive agricultural lands, open green spaces and loss of surface water bodies. Hence, there is a dire need to study, understand and quantify the urban sprawl. In this study, an attempt has been made to monitor land use/land cover of part of Dehradun city over two periods of time i.e., from 2004 to 2014 for change detection analysis and to assess urban sprawl using IRS P-6 data and topographic sheets, in GIS environment for better decision making and sustainable urban growth.

Urban sprawl and its impact on landuse/land cover dynamics of Dehradun City, India

Analyses of land use land cover (LULC) change and built-up expansion in the suburb of a metropolitan city: Spatio-temporal analysis of Delhi NCR using landsat datasets

Monitoring and modelling spatio-temporal urban growth of Delhi using Cellular Automata and geoinformatics

Significant changes have been observed since 1991 in the nature and pattern of urban growth in India. Our cities are in the midst of restructuring space, in terms of both use and form. The paper addresses various complex urban issues associated with the present pattern of urban development through review of urban development of selected metropolitan cities of India which have experienced the impacts of LPG (Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization) process. Spatial trends, prevailing zoning, building bye laws (Floor Area Ratio and density) development control regulations, urban housing and transport are analyzed in the context of the current phenomenon of urban sprawl witnessed in India. The implications of such growth patterns of India are projected and the impacts analyzed. In conclusion, the need for an alternative sustainable urban development pattern is outlined for future metropolitan cities of India.

An analysis of urban growth trends in the post-economic reforms period in India

The rapid urban growth poses a huge challenge in sustaining the quality of local environment and life characteristics in contemporary cities. There is a growing body of literature on sustainable cities, QoL, livability; yet a transparent and verifiable knowledge on its assessment at the urban scale is both limited and disparate. Very recently, the use of computational models, tools and indices has seen a sudden upsurge in QoL assessment at the city and sub-city level. This research, through an exhaustive review of scientific and policy literature postulates that despite promulgation of numerous and comprehensive indices and tools, yet these demonstrate a great deal of inconsistency and incomparability. This necessitates an investigation into what ought to be the preferred attributes/features of an ideal model, thereby demanding a systematic, transparent and objective appraisal of urban QoL assessment tools used worldwide. Addressing to the above objective, the research examines peer-reviewed papers to derive eight fundamental study criteria (type of dataset, scope or parameters, sample- coverage and unit, approach, technique, model type, interphase and application) that could typically characterizes such tool. It then reviews scientific and policy literature, open-access webpages on the internet to identify a first of its kind, exhaustive inventory of 26 urban QoL models and then critically evaluates these on the basis of the eight study criteria. The ensuing results bring to the fore a plethora of new, interesting and some inconvenient findings, most importantly that not even a single tool captures all the seven theoretical dimensions of QoL. Despite meant to evaluate quality in cities, only few tools conduct qualitative, subjective, bottom-up, GIS based simulation modeling that could effectively be put to use for more public and policy oriented applications. Lastly, the research demonstrates with credible evidence that a majority of tools/index continue to understand the city as a homogenous entity, with limited know-how on the variability of QoL at the neighbourhood level.

Review of Concepts, Tools and Indices for the Assessment of Urban Quality of Life

Significant changes have been observed since 1991 in the nature and pattern of urban growth in India. Cities are in the midst of restructuring space, in terms of both use and form. The city of Pune is selected for primary field case study of urban housing and development scenario. Pune is one of the selected half a dozen urban agglomerations experiencing the developmental effects of liberalisation-privatisation-globalisation (LPG) process the country is undergoing since 1991. The analysis includes profile of the city, various facets of residential development, a detailed primary survey of households and real estate stakeholders. The paper concludes with key observations on residential real estate development and on the other hand suitable lessons are learnt from the housing preference study to establish the need for alternative sustainable urban development pattern for Pune in particular and other similar LPG affected Indian metropolitan cities in general.

Housing preferences and development study in the post LPG era in India: a case of Pune

Quality of life (QoL) in urban areas is increasingly finding prominence in practice. There are numerous studies interlinking residential built environment and QoL at the city level but very few at ...

Evaluation of QoL in cities of diverse neighbourhood typologies: A scientific study of New Delhi

The urban growth trends of the key metropolitan cities of India ,in the post economic reforms era beginning 1991 , are characterized by a multitude of problems associated with low density, low rise and unregulated sprawl without adequate infrastructure, leading to loss of fertile agricultural lands and other phenomenon of unsustainable urban development. The paper, after discussing the present pattern of urban growth, outlines the issues and challenges of Indian urban development for the 21st century and presents an approach to sustainable urban development in terms of integrating high density mixed land use development with public transport and ICET systems to achieve resource conservation and improved quality of life . The relevant urban development guidelines and planning standards of constituent aspects of a city, including the infrastructure of public transport have been evolved and these are validated in the cases of (i) a new city and (ii) proposed development of an existing city.

J. Chadchan

Papers

An analysis of urban growth trends in the post-economic reforms period in India

Review of Concepts, Tools and Indices for the Assessment of Urban Quality of Life

Housing preferences and development study in the post LPG era in India: a case of Pune

Evaluation of QoL in cities of diverse neighbourhood typologies: A scientific study of New Delhi

Integrating urban land use and infrastructure for sustainable development