Abstract

Indian metropolitan (tier I) cities are undergoing rapid urbanisation during the post-globalization era with the unprecedented market interventions, which have led to rapid urban expansions with drastic land cover changes affecting the ecology, climate, hydrology and local environment. This unplanned urbanisation has given way to the dispersed, haphazard growth at the city outskirts with the lack of basic amenities and infrastructure as the planners lack advance information of sprawl regions. This has necessitated understanding and visualization of urbanisation patterns for planning towards sustainable cities. The analyses of urban dynamics during 1973-2017 using temporal remote sensing data reveals of 1028% increase in urban area (concrete area, paved surfaces) with the decline of 88% vegetation and water bodies by 79%. The consequence of this unrealistic growth is the unliveable status evident from the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, loss of groundwater table (from 28 to 300 m), contamination of water sources, increase in disease vectors, etc. An attempt is made to understand the implications of unplanned growth at the micro level by considering the prime growth poles such as Peenya Industrial Estate (PIE), White Field (WF), Bangalore South Region (BSR). The spatial analyses reveal the decline of vegetation and open spaces with an intense urbanisation of 86.35 % (in BSR), 87.39% (PIE) and 81.61% (WF) in 2017. WF witnessed the drastic transformation from agrarian ecosystem to a concrete jungle during four decades. Spatial patterns of urbansisation were assessed through the landscape metrics and rule based modelling which confirms intense urbansisation with single class dominance. Specifically, NP metrics depicts PIE region had sprawl growth till 2003 with numerous patches and is transformed by 2017 it has become to a single dense urban patch. This necessitates appropriate planning strategies to mitigate further erosion of environmental resources and ensure clean air, water and environment to all residents.

Keywords

Urbanisation, Landscape metrics, Rule based modelling, Bangalore, Micro level analysis, Sustainability