Abstract
Lahore, a metropolis and 2nd largest city of Pakistan, has been experiencing rapid urban expansion over the past five decades. The socio-economic development and growth of the urban population have caused the rapid increase of urban expansion. The increase in the built-up area of Lahore has seen remarkable growth during the past five decades. This study is aimed at detecting the Spatio-temporal changes in land use land cover and evaluating the urban expansion of Lahore since 1973. The conversion of land to other uses is primarily because of growth in urban population, whereas the increase in economic activities is the central reason for the land-use changes. In this study, temporal Landsat imageries were integrated with demographic data in the GIS environment to quantify the spatial and temporal dynamics of land use land cover (LULC) changes and urban expansion of Lahore city. The supervised image classification of maximum likelihood algorithm was applied on Landsat MSS (1973 and 1980), TM (1990), ETM+ (2000), TM (2010), and OLI/TIRs (2020) images, whereas a postclassification comparison technique was employed to detect changes over time. The spatial and temporal analysis revealed that during the past five decades, the built-up area of Lahore city has expanded by ~ 532 km2. It was found from the analysis that in Lahore city the urban expansion was primarily at the cost of loss of fertile agricultural land, vegetation, and other cultivable land use. The analysis further revealed that the structure and growth pattern of Lahore has mainly followed road network and linear expansion. The results indicate that this accretive urban expansion is attributed to socio-economic, demography, conversion of farmland, rural-urban migration, proximity to transportation routes, and commercial factors. This study envisions for decision-makers and urban planners to devise effective spatial urban planning strategies and check the growth trend of Lahore city.
Highlights
Cities are central places for socio-economic activities and human survival (Chen et al 2021)
The history of development and land use planning in Lahore city has been reported in several studies in the previous decades (Rana and Bhatti 2018)
The present study has proven the effectiveness of GIS and remote sensing techniques in producing precise land use maps and detailed change statistics of Lahore, which provides a database for the site suitability for further urban expansion of the rapidly growing metropolis of the country
Summary
Cities are central places for socio-economic activities and human survival (Chen et al 2021). Pakistan as a developing country is facing rapidly increasing urbanization and in Pakistan, the proportion of the urban population living in cities increased from 17.8% to 36.4%, from 1951 to 2017 (GoP 2000, 2017). In comparison with other countries of South Asia, Pakistan has the maximum number of urban dwellers because 36.4% of its human population settled in towns and cities (GoP 2017). Pakistan is one of the fastest urbanizing countries in South Asia and the share of the urban population is increasing significantly. It is projected that by the year 2030, the proportion of the urban population of Pakistan will increase to 50% (GoP 2015). The annual urbanization rate of Pakistan is 3% and is rapidly increasing in South Asian countries (Kugelman 2013)
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