Spatiotemporal Analysis of Urban Growth, Sprawl and Structure of Rajkot, Vadodara and Surat (Gujarat-India) based on Geographic Information Systems, in Relation to the Sustainability Pentagon Analysis

Irregular and exponential growth of urban/suburban commercial and residential zones has resulted in improper and irreversible land transformation and use. The lack of data regarding the driving forces to sprawl and densification of suburban areas, identification of the pressures created by unplanned sprawl over time and inadequate information to measure, monitor and understand the sprawl and structure of a demography has resulted in an imbalanced sustainable development leading to numerous adverse impacts on a demography’s natural, human, physical, social and financial capital. In the present study, patterns of spatiotemporal growth, sprawl and structure of three cities, namely, Rajkot, Surat and Vadodara (Gujarat-India) were studied over the past decade with the help of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems. Ground surveys regarding the inferences from the processed GIS images were performed in order to understand the impacts of climate change on health and economy, due to non monitored urban sprawl over the past decade. The driving forces to the sprawl have been accounted and related to the financial development of the cities over time of study. The temporal pressures hence created have been related to resultant impacts of climate change due to improper environmental planning and management. The study also compares the growth rate and sprawl patterns of the three cities on the basis of Sustainability Pentagon Analysis, by distributing relatively equal weights to the driving forces of the change in urban structure and their resultant effects. It ultimately suggests the ways in which the sprawl of urban and suburban centers of the cities could be planned and moderated for achieving sustainable development.