Study of urban sprawl for patna city using remote sensing &GIS

Abstract

Urbanization is the movement of population from rural to urban areas and the resulting increasing proportion of a population that resides in urban rather than rural places. Urban sociology is the sociology of urban living of people in groups and social relationship in urban social circumstances and situation. Urbanization is a two way process because it involves not only movement from village to cities and change from agricultural occupation to business, trade, service and profession, but it also involves change in the migrants attitudes, beliefs, values and behavior patterns. The process of urbanization is rapid all over the world. The facilities like education, healthcare system, employment avenues, civic facilities and social welfare are reasons attracting people to urban areas. Due to the rapid course of urbanization, the haphazard growth of major cities is one of the challenging situations in front of any country. As unorganized urbanization is becoming the major problem, it requires the immediate solution for sustainable development of urban land. In the emerging scenario it is essential to have updated information on urban growth patterns and its impact on the living environment. The growth and development of cities are likely to continue and therefore there will be a need for proper planning and managing or improving the existing infrastructure facilities. In this juncture, the state of the art technologies Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) can play an imperative role. Patna metropolis is one such rapidly developing city in Bihar. This paper explores the study of Urbanization growth of Patna city using RS data and GIS. The present study focuses on the nature and pattern of urban expansion of Patna city over its surrounding region during the period from 1991 to 2008. Patna urban agglomeration area consists of eleven constituents. Subsequently, two sample towns from the respective zones were selected to study the pattern of urban expansion and there from identify the factor responsible for the urban sprawl of Patna city. The study has indicated that road and rail transport was solely responsible for the rapid urban development in the sample towns. In addition, GIS based analysis of the pattern of urban expansion over the demographic change and land use modifications has also indicated that urban growth of the Patna city has mainly taken place linearly along the major river Ganga in the study area.