Urban Form and Regional Development of National Capital Region

Abstract

Urban form of a specific city is the result of a variety of influences, including site and topography, economic and demographic development and planning efforts in the past. Various scholars have explored the origins of differences in urban form through comparison with socio-economic developmental indicators and historical trajectories in urban development. Even in case of Delhi National Capital Region (NCR) some differences are expected in the urban form since the towns though belonging to the same region have gone through different histories in the past and the present pattern of growth is also different for different towns. In this paper, an attempt has been made to quantify spatial urban patterns from optical remote sensing datasets to describe forms, structures and changes in urban land use. Taking urban area as a spatial landscape unit, various landscape indices have been used to describe the urban form in the area. In order to test the effect of level of development on the urban form a correlation was run between different class metrics, socio-economic development and infrastructural development for different cities of NCR. The levels of development of the towns have been calculated using Principal Component Analysis Method. Towns of NCR have shown more or less similar pattern for the urban form, yet some differences are there mainly because of their different levels of economic development and location. Most of the towns have seen increase in built up along the national highway or state highway. Towns with the dominance of agricultural base have simpler form in comparison to the towns with industrial base and they grow in a uniform manner in all the directions. The datasets used are based on the remote sensing images (Landsat TM, 1989, Landsat TM, 2000 and Landsat TM, 2011) of National Capital Region and statistical analysis of primary census abstract and town directory for the data pertaining to towns for their level of development.