Available online at http://www.journalcra.com INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CURRENT RESEARCH International Journal of Current Research Vol. 4, Issue, 04, pp.221-226, April, 2012 ISSN: 0975-833X RESEARCH ARTICLE MONITORING URBAN GROWTH PATTERN AND ITS IMPACT ON NEIGHBOURING VILLAGES: A CASE STUDY ON RAJARHAT REGION, WEST BENGAL Suman Paul Post Graduate Department of Geography, Krishnagar Government College, Krishnagar, Nadia. Pin – 741101 ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article History: Urban growth is a worldwide phenomenon. It is not only a haphazard physical explosion of urban th Received 08 January, 2012 population but also manifests a disorderly and discontinuous development of urban place. Urban Received in revised form growth is such a process which takes place slowly or rapidly to occupy the adjacent land of a city or 14th February, 2012 a town and brings about socio-cultural changes in the land use pattern, demographic features Accepted 25th March, 2012 Published online 30th April, 2012 (population growth, literacy rate, occupational structure etc.) and transforms the economic livelihood of the people of the concerned area. It is very much interesting to note that the adjacent Key words: villages of an urban place are influenced by a number of factors associated with urban growth and these factors make considerable impact on the village life. The present study focuses on the nature of Urban growth, Urban expansion, urban expansion in Rajarhat region during the time period from 1981-2001. Based on the proximity Demographic features, of the Urban Municipality (i.e. Rajarhat-Gopalpur Municipality) three villages were selected to study RS and GIS, the pattern of urban expansion and there from identify the factor responsible urban expansion. This Modifications. area is under Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) and Sector-V (IT Hub) area developed very rapidly. The study has indicated that the development of road transport in the ‘Rajarhat-Gopalpur Municipality’ and ‘Rajarhat-New Town’ area make an impetus for the rapid urban expansion during 1981-2001 though the region first experience urban growth in 1971. In addition, RS and GIS based analysis of the pattern of urban expansion over the demographic change and land use modifications has also indicated that urban growth mainly takes place linearly along the major roads in the study area. Copy Right, IJCR, 2012, Academic Journals. All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION made at micro level by selecting three villages namely Ghuni, Rekjuani and Bishnupur of Rajarhat urban area of the district The process of urbanisation is a universal phenomenon taking of North Twenty Parganas, West Bengal which shows a place the world over, where human dwell. All countries are prominent sprawl. This paper is an attempt of understanding prone to this bewildering phenomenon chiefly responsible due the impact of urban growth phenomenon. the increase of population growth, economy and infrastructure initiatives (Sudhira et al 2004). The extent of urban growth or Study Area urbanisation is one such phenomenon that drives the change in land use patterns. The expanding network of roads and The study focuses on the impact on three villages (i.e. Ghuni, increasing reliance on the automobile, population began Rekjuani and Bishnupur) in Rajarhat region of North 24 shifting from cities to fringe and thus the land use pattern of Parganas, West Bengal, India, due to urban growth. The study area extends from 88026’40” E to 88033’ E longitude and those adjacent areas changed very rapidly. The spatial patterns 0 0 of urban growth over different time periods can be 23 35’ N to 23 40’ N latitude. Out of three villages, two systematically mapped, monitored and accurately assessed villages namely Ghuni, Rekjuani are located within 2 km from satellite data (remotely sensed data) along with boundary whereas village Bishnupur is located 5 km away conventional ground data. The recent technologies like GIS from the urban concentration. The total population and and remote sensing helps in identifying the pattern of growth geographical areas of Ghuni, Rekjoani and Bishnupur are and its rate. Mapping urban growth provides a picture of 15318, 13291 and 10293 respectively. The geographical areas where this type of growth is occurring and to suggest the of Ghuni, Rekjoani and Bishnupur are 3.23, 8.91 and 4.76 sq. likely future directions and patterns of urban growth. However km. A major portion of village Rekjuani and Ghuni has been only a few studies were attempted to established the inter taken for the development of Rajarhat-New Town urban area relationship between the road transport development and land during 2001 – 2007 (HIDCO). The objectives of this study use change in rural landscape at micro level (Saravanan, focus on some specific items which are: 2010). Hence by realizing the gap the present attempt has been To identify the urban growth of the study area during last two decades (i.e. 1981-2001). *Corresponding author: [email protected] To study and compare the demographic changes between three sample villages during 1991 – 2001 and 222 International Journal of Current Research, Vol. 4, Issue, 04, pp.221-226, April, 2012 To spatially map the land use changes of three selected development was limited to the temporal mapping of urban villages during 2001 – 2011. and built-up areas, principal transportation routes and natural drainage system to aid in understanding the spatial and Data Base temporal land transformation that occurred over time in Rajarhat. Satellite Data: Landsat TM (P/R: 139/40) for 1991, Landsat ETM+ (P/R: 139/40) for 2001 and Google Rajarhat region has experienced urban growth first in 1971. In Earth Map for 2011. 1971, Krishnapur Urban Agglomeration having three non- Census of India: Primary Census Abstract, Rajarhat, municipal growth (i.e. Krishnapur, Jyangra, Arjunpur) with an North 24 Parganas, West Bengal Series, 1991 & area of 11.9 sq. km holding only 33360 urbanites. During 2001. 1971 – 1981, three more urban areas have developed as non- Local Planning Report from Rajarhat Development municipal and out growth. Urban growth within this period Block. was more than double whereas the urban area growth was just 12%. In 1991 the scenario was the same and population MATERIALS AND METHODS increases up to 119650 and urban area was 17.43 sq. km. But the whole scenario has changed drastically within 1991-2001. The urban population has bounced up in to 2.5 times in respect Landsat TM and ETM+ satellites typically cover an area of to 1991. Within this decade all the urban areas of Rajarhat approximate scene size of 170 km north–south by 183 km merged under single municipality, i.e. Rajarhat-Gopalpur east–west with a sensor spatial resolution or pixel size of 30 m Municipality. Decadal growth rate of urban population within for all the spectral bands except band six (thermal band) which this time span found highest in comparison to other two is 120 m. The study area covers only small portion the whole decades. scene. It has been extracted from the scene; all bands except band six were stacked and clipped for further pre-processing The standard image processing techniques such as, image in Geomatica 10.1. Effective image pre-processing is critical extraction, rectification, restoration and classification were to successful urban LULC mapping and change detection. applied in this current study. Basically two satellite data has After selecting the subset of imagery, it has been calibrated to been used for this study. First one is Landsat TM data of 1991 ensure that the observed change in signal is attributable to and other one is Landsat ETM+ data of 2001. The Gaussian “true” changes in the land surface rather than a change due to maximum likelihood classifier (MLC) was employed for non-surface factors. Moreover, the analysts made an classification. The original classification of land use of 16 automated image enhancement and contrast adjustments to the categories was aggregated to built-up (residential and subset images of the study area. commercial), agricultural land and water bodies with canal. It has been found from the analysis that, the area is horizontally eCognition Developer 8 was used for Land use mapping of expanding along with vertical intensification. This vertical villages for 2001 and 2011 time span due to the advantage of intensification has started in late 90’s and added a new classifying image at image object level instead of pixel level. dimension in the urban growth process. This recent The real world is not made of pixels; rather it is arranged in phenomena of high rise building in both commercial and objects. Object-oriented classification avoids mixed pixel residential sectors, clearly manifest the area to adopt this problems which usually occur in urban area image process to cope with the ever increasing population pressure classification. For example, at pixel level classification, bare and unavailability of land within the area. sand soil and the impervious parts of urban areas usual create a mixed pixel problem. The advantage of object-based classification is that each image object represents a definite Demographic Changes of the Sample Villages during 1991- spatially connected region of the image. The pixels of the 2001 associated region are linked to the image object. In addition to The term demography is used in the study of human the multispectral bands, the object-based approach takes population, its structure and change. Here in this study few advantage of all dimensions of remote sensing including demographic parameters like population size, population spatial (area, length, width and direction), the morphological density, household density, family size cultivators, agricultural (shape parameters, texture), contextual (relationship to workers and non-agricultural workers are considered as urban neighbors, proximity analysis) and temporal (time series). The growth indicators. The above mentioned parameters are resulting object-based features can then be incorporated into obtained from Census of India report which helps to determine the classification process.