Quantifying Past, Present, and Future Urban Dynamics for Sustainable Urban Development

Overview

Ever since the Indian government incorporated the principles of liberalization, privatization and globalization in its economic policy, India’s urban centres have recorded rapid economic investment boosts that have boosted their growth significantly. Gurugram is one such urban centre to have emerged and established itself as one of India’s most vibrant cities post-liberalization, receiving huge investment impetus and consequently rapid urban growth. However, this sudden, poorly planned acceleration has left the “Millennium City of India” struggling with unsustainable development in many ways.

This makes it important to understand and assess the past, present, and future scope of urbanization in terms of the built cover in Gurugram. Such an analysis will reveal how rapidly built development is taking place in the city, why sustainable urban growth pathways cannot be implemented and/or what is hindering them, and what should be the direction of future urban development to prevent unsustainable models of growth in the times to come.

Vision: To assess the past, current, and potential status of urbanization in Gurugram in terms of built development, with an aim to contribute towards better, more sustainable spatial planning without hampering the natural ecosystem.

Objectives

y To leverage Geospatial technologies to understand and quantify local land transformation as a result of existing land use policies post-1991. y To measure the urban footprint. y To predict future urban growth and growth potential in the centre until 2030 using past-transition method. y To generate qualitative and quantitative input for contributing towards future land policies.

Stakeholders involved

The Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA). Solution and Implementation

The study involved preparing past, present, and future built-up area maps besides collating statistical evidence that can be incorporated in future plans for better land use management by GMDA. Use of Geospatial Technologies

The study adopted state-of-the-art open-source remote sensing data (Landsat, Digital Elevation Model, Open Street Map, Nighttime Light) and geographic information systems (GIS) to track the past built-up dynamics in terms of built-up growth and empirical measurement of urban sprawl (i.e., infilling, edge expansion and leap frogging) in Gurugram. Eventually, the study helps predict future built-up growth pathways under a business-as-usual scenario by leveraging advanced geostatistical techniques. Key Outputs

The study established future potential built-up growth area maps, which are validated with existing ongoing real estate development plans regularly. The maps so produced serve the purpose of reference maps for GMDA when they plan for future interventions in concerned areas, whether in terms of land use planning or services planning, including water and sanitation, infrastructure, environmental protection measures, and so on. The study’s outputs are directly aligned with SDG 11 that talks about resilient and sustainable urban management.

Outcomes achieved

With the process of urbanization still in its early-to-mid stages in India, there is a considerable window of opportunity for shaping our urban centres in an informed and sustainable manner. The study prioritizes and sets an example for strategic decision making on the shaping and reshaping of India’s existing urban centres for sustainable development. Analyses as the one presented here illustrate how spatial developments are likely to change spaces in the future. It is then the task of societies to discuss if this is the future desired and, consequently, politicians and planners to develop alternative, more sustainable urbanization paths.