Analyzing Rapid Urbanization in Panchkula Using Geospatial Technology

Journal of Water and Land use Management ISSN: 0973-9300, Volume 16, Issue 1

Rina1 and Rohtas Godara

Received: 15 December 2015 Reviewed and Accepted: 10 January 2016 Published: 14 February 2016

Abstract Today more than half of the world’s population resides in urban areas whereas in case of India it’s above thirty percent. But as per the census of 2011 the absolute increase of population is more in urban areas in comparison to rural areas. The latest census of 2011 reveals that about 55 percent of the total population of Panchkula resides in urban area which is above the national average. All this has resulted into physical expansion of the urban area. This physical urban growth is the process of transformation of land use from non-urban or rural to urban use over a period of time. This physical expansion can be radial or sectoral in the periphery of an urban centre. The detection and quantification of this urban growth help urban planning for sustainable future. The present study aims to measure and quantify the urban expansion of Panchkula over a period of one decade using geospatial technology and compare the attributes of urban expansion with those of growth of population. A detailed dataset for built-up areal extent for the city has been derived from an assemblage of multi-temporal(2002 and 2012) LISS III satellite imageries, survey of India Topographical Sheets, Land use map prepared by Town Planning Department and ground survey data. For processing the data ERDAS 9.0 and ArcGIS 9.3 have been used. The study reveals that the agricultural land has experienced rapid transformation and continues to coalesce in the built-up area. The maximum addition to the built-up area has been experienced in the Eastern part of the Panchkula city and along the National Highways.

Keywords Urbanization; transformation: built-up: physical expansion: Spatio- temporal

Rina ()  Rohtas Godara Department of IT, GGDSD College, Sector-32, Chandigarh, India Department of Geography, Govt. P.G. College, Panchkula, India  [email protected]

Journal of Water and Land use Management ISSN: 0973-9300, Volume 16, Issue 1

Introduction India is one of the fastest growing economies for last two decade and urbanization is taking place at great pace in India. Keeping pace with the other developing countries, the India too have the excessive growth in population and the increasing trend towards urbanization has led to the haphazard growth of the urban centers thereby converting precious agricultural land into urban land. Today more than half of the world’s population resides in urban areas whereas in case of India it’s above thirty percent. But as per the census of 2011 the absolute increase of population is more in urban areas in comparison to rural areas. Although the share of urban population to total population seems to be low, however the growth rate of the urban population is much higher considering the growth of total population. Even the class II towns in India have registered a phenomenal increase from 102 in 1961 to 468 in 2011. About 70 per cent of the urban population lives in Class 1 cities in 2011 and thus, they have an important place in urbanization in India. Thus the pressure of continuous growing urban areas is gradually changing the sur- rounding environment and neighborhoods. All this has led to many problems such as haphazard growth of urban area, industries, utility networks and conversion of precious agricultural land into urban area. Sprawl generally refers to some type of development with impacts such as loss of agricultural land, open space, and eco- logically sensitive habitats. The common definition of urban sprawl is the spread- ing out of a city and its suburbs over more and more rural land at the periphery of an urban area involving the conversion of open space (rural land) into built-up and developed land over time (Sprawl City, 2007 .Usually sprawls take place on the urban fringe, at the edge of an urban area or along the highways and others roads. The state of Haryana while keeping pace with the growing urbanization at the national level registered a decennial growth rate of 44.59 percent in 2001-2011 decade thereby exhibiting a decennial growth rate above the national average. Panch- kula town which grew as a satellite town of Chandigarh is not an exception to this phenomenon of rapid urbanization. In the past couple of decades this urban centre has also witnessed phenomenal growth in urbanization. The advantage of Chandi- garh`s proximity was the underlying incentive. It is also argued that the urbanization in India is limited to just a few million plus cities (Datta, 2006). Devis Mukhhopadhyay and Zerah further highlighted that a number of small towns have also grown substantially over time. Pradhan (2012) finds that 37.2 percent of 2489 new settlements and 33.6 percent of their urban population belongs to these peripheries. Kundu and Saraswati (2012) have revealed that the rate of growth of million plus cities has come down significantly. The above discussion reveals that India is rapidly becoming urbanized.

Study Area Panchkula district is located in the northern part of Haryana having a locational extent between of 32° 27' to 30°57' north longitude and 76°48' to 77° 10' east longitude. It is bounded by Himachal Pradesh in the north and east, Punjab and Union Territory of Chandigarh in the west and by Ambala district in the south and south- Journal of Water and Land use Management ISSN: 0973-9300, Volume 16, Issue 1 east. Panchkula district has a sub tropical continental monsoon climate where the seasons are, hot summer, cool winter, good monsoon rainfall and great variation in temperature. In winter frost sometimes occurs during December and January. The rainfall is mostly received in summer season during monsoon and also by western disturbances in winters. Morni hills constitute the highest point of the district as well as of Haryana. The Ghaggar is the only main river which originates in Hima- chal Pradesh and flows through the district upto Hanumangarh district in Raja- sthan where it dries up in the desert. It is very shallow outside of the monsoons. The other rivers of the district are Sirsa and Kaushalya, a tributary of Ghaggar. Generally the slope of the district is from north east to south west and in this direction, most of the rivers/streams rainfed torrents flow down and spread much grav- els and pebbles in their beds. The soils in the district are mainly light loam, silty loam, loam, piedmont and silt clay. The underground water in the district occurs under confirmed and semi-confirmed conditions which is generally fresh and suit- able for domestic and irrigation purposes. At present there are eight towns in the district viz. Panchkula UE, Pinjore MC, Kalka MC, Raipur Rani, HMT Pinjore, Chandi Mandir, Bir Ghaggar. The only Hill station in Haryana called Morni is also in this district. The origin of the name Panchkula is based on the five irrigation canals (or kuls as they were called, making it Panch Kul of five canals) that take water from the Ghaggar in the uphill section and distribute it from Nada Sahib to Mansa Devi. The district is spread over an area of 898 sq kms with a total population of 5.61 lac as per 2011 census.

Database and Methodology Based on the objectives of the present study, the requisite data and information was collected and processed. Secondary data was put into service. The requirements of a particular theme guided the selection of the data mode and its processing by using Geospatial Techniques for Change Detection. Urban growth of Panchkula City along with other towns in the district within the last 10 years is observed through geospatial technology. The change detection in urban built-up area is based on satellite imagery of LISS-III 2002 and 2012. Land use/ land cover classification is based on supervised classification. Supervised classification was performed for the land use/land cover category of built-up area through ERDAS 9.0 and Arc GIS 9.3 software is used to prepare the thematic maps and to analyze the changes during (2002 to 2012) in urban sprawl as shown in methodology chart (Fig-1). Ground truth observations were also performed to check the accuracy from Google earth and actual field visit. Toposheets at a scale of 1:50000 have been used for geo-referencing satellite imagery of study area. Census data also have been used to analyze the population growth. Services of District Town and Country Planning office were utilized regarding the spatial expansion of the towns in the district

Journal of Water and Land use Management ISSN: 0973-9300, Volume 16, Issue 1

. Objectives

Data Acquisition Reconnaissance

Image Processing Development & of Image Enhancement Classification Scheme

Pre-Field Land Use Maps

Land Use 2002 Land Use 2012

Ground Truth

Finalization of Land Use Maps

Land Use 2002 Land Use 2012

Change Detection

Figure 1 Methodology Chart

Change Detection Analysis: Land use/ land cover change analysis was done by computing different land use/cover categories from the year 2002 to 2012. Rela- tive Deviation (RD %) was computed as under : Journal of Water and Land use Management ISSN: 0973-9300, Volume 16, Issue 1

RD = A - B x 100 B Where: A is the area under specified land use/cover class for the year 2012. B is the area under the same land use/cover class for the year 2002.

Results and Discussion Ever since the establishment of Panchkula in 1970 it has experienced rapid growth not only in population but also in its areal extent. But this growth had assumed alarming pace particularly after Panchkula was declared a district in 1995. An at- tempt has been made to explain the trends in urban sprawl of Panchkula by analyzing growth of built up area from 2002 to 2012. A built up area is defined as an area of human habitation developed as result of non agricultural use and which has a cover of buildings, transportation, communication and utilities (National Remote Sensing Agency, 1990).

Figure 2 Sowing Urban Built up Area in 2002 and 2012

In Panchkula urban estate the expansion of built-up area has mainly taken place in the northern region and the eastern part along the NH 73. In the northern part of the city HUDA carved out two more residential sectors- 2 and 6 which lead to the expansion of the city in this direction. The expansion of the city in the eastern side Journal of Water and Land use Management ISSN: 0973-9300, Volume 16, Issue 1 is due to development of residential sectors -23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30and 31 by HUDA, to house the ever rising urban population of the Panchkula UE, along NH 73 and Ghaggar river. Even the Planners have come up with an Information Tech- nology Park in sector 22 on the bank of river Ghaggar. All this has led to the expansion of built up area of the Panchkula urban estate during 2002-2012. The map in Figure 3 clearly depicts the change in urban sprawl in Panchkula during 2002- 2012.

: Figure 3 Showing Change detection Urban Built-up during 2002 to 2012

It can be made out from the map that there has been phenomenal expansion along the NH 22 in all the towns located on it viz. Panchkula urban estate, HMT Pinjore, Chandi Mandir, Pinjore MC, and Kalka MC from south to north. Along the NH 22 the built-up area has increased on the eastern side as a residential township developed by DLF has come up so as to add to the urban sprawl thereby encroaching the agricultural land. The built-up area has also increased addition of new census Journal of Water and Land use Management ISSN: 0973-9300, Volume 16, Issue 1 towns HMT Pinjore, Chandi Mandir, Bir Ghaggar and Ramgarh by the 2011 census thereby leading to the enhancement of the urban sprawl. Since the study area is situated near Chandigarh and the pace of urban development is very high. Therefore, fast expansion of urban area is due to migration from rural to urban area. This migration is taking place due to availability of employment opportunities. Another major reason for expansion of urbanization in study area is the migration of urban population from Chandigarh to Panchkula area due to low cost of land. Thus, Panchkula has acquired the status of a satellite town of Chandigarh, accommodating largely, the overspill from the main city. It has assumed the char- acter of a haven for those who could not or did not want to house themselves at Chandigarh. The rapid pace of population increase is attributed to establishment of various special government driven projects like HMT, Chandimandir Cantonment, ITBP complex, Terminal Ballistic Research Laboratory, Urban Estate, and proximity to Chandigarh which already has experienced tremendous socio-economic and physical development of infrastructure. All these factors together also acted as centripetal forces to attract huge number in-migrants from neighboring regions. Even the industrial growth in the district has been instrumental in the expansion of the built-up area as there are five developed industrial areas in the district in the district. Thus the study concludes with a note that the urban centre of Panchkula has experienced phenomenal growth in the urban sprawl due to industrial growth and residential expansion of the urban built up areas. On the whole, the rationale put behind the creation of Panchkula as a city highlighted that agriculture in the Panchkula region was stagnating, population pressure was intensifying, and out-migration from villages was picking up. The rural land was not likely to withstand encroachment of urban sprawl and would be prone to haphazard and ill-planned growth. Hence, a strategy to cater to the antici- pated urban development was worked out with the creation of Panchkula city. The city was planned to be the hub for workers engaged in commerce, housing, transportation and industry. The proposed site is very close to the exit point of Hima- chal Pradesh and it was envisaged as a collection-cum-preservation and distribu- tion centre for the hill products. Hindustan Machine Tools factory and the Tractor Plant at Pinjore had come up in proximity to the site and these were interpreted as an opportunity for a town like Panchkula to satisfy their housing and other service needs. In addition, the proposed town was to house small and medium sized industries. The industrial growth of the new site was to get a further boost after the introduction of the Chandigarh–Ludhiana railway line. These kinds of activities in Panchkula have their own adverse impact on the sustainability of population in terms of pollution of various kinds, air and water pollution due to rise in the demand for meeting the rapid increasing population base in the region. The agricultural and forest land is being encroached upon to create infrastructural facilities for meeting the needs of urban population. As a result the agricultural land has experienced rapid transformation and continues to coalesce in the built-up area. Linear growth has been noticed along the National Highways 22 and 73 mainly towards the north, north-east and south-east direc- Journal of Water and Land use Management ISSN: 0973-9300, Volume 16, Issue 1 tions. The maximum development and expansion has been observed under residential uses both in the form of planned as well as unplanned development. The proposed development plan prepared by the Town and Country Planning Depart- ment and the existing physical growth and direction of city reveals that the future expansion of the city will be governed by existing transport corridors, existing and future planned residential developments on the outskirts of the city mainly in the north-western, north-eastern, eastern and south-eastern direction of the city..

Conclusion Panchkula has grown considerably both in terms of its population and physical expansion since 2002. Much of the urban growth and physical expansion has take place over the agricultural land which is appended to the built-up area of the city. The built-up area in and around the towns of the district Panchkula occupied 1.67 percent of TGA in 2002 which subsequently increased to 2.54 percent in 2012 in a short span of ten years thereby registering a decadal growth rate of 52.13 percent. As land is a scarce commodity and the rapid increase in population and urbanization the conversion of fertile agricultural land into built-up area is irreversi- ble. Therefore preservation of prime agricultural land is the need of the hour to the food requirements of the ever increasing population and to preserve the habitat for variety if flora and fauna. The preservation of such type of land is all the more important for maintaining open space and environmental quality in the urban areas. The need of the hour is to go in for judicious use of the prime land keeping in the concept of sustainable development..

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