Spatio-temporal analysis of urban growth in selected small, medium and large Indian cities

Abstract

This study attempts to ascertain the spatial and temporal variations in the evolution of Indian cities using multi-date remote sensing data. A two-stage object-based nearest neighbour classification approach with hierarchical segmentation was used to extract built-up area in selected small, medium and large cities, whereas object-based temporal inversion was applied for change analysis. The temporal trend of net population density, degree of scattered development and compactness of urban core in each city was determined using the built-up area. The study observed a declining trend in growth rate of built-up area in small and medium sized-cities, in contrast to large cities. However, the net population density in cities of all types is decreasing as urban growth has outpaced the corresponding population growth. Furthermore, small and medium cities indicated greater tendency for scattered development in comparison to large cities, whereas the core urban areas of the later appeared relatively less compact.

Keywords:

• Urban sprawl
• object-based classification
• population density
• scattered growth
• compactness
• Indian cities

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Mr. Tapan Misra, Director, Space Applications Centre, ISRO and Dr Raj Kumar, Deputy Director, EPSA, for motivation in carrying out this study. We thank the Editor-in-Chief and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions and comments, which have been very helpful in improving the paper. Thanks are also due to Prof. Anjana Vyas, Ms. Shailly Gandhi and Ms. Jui Vohra from CEPT University, Ahmedabad for carrying out initial work for this study. We would also like to express our sincere gratitude to Dr Markand Oza, Dr. Prakash Chauhan and Shri R. M. Parmar for their valuable feedback.