Urban Sprawl and Its Impact on land Use and SocioEconomic Condition: A Case Study of Barddhaman District, West Bengal

Abstract

Urban sprawl is a worldwide phenomenon. It is not only a haphazard physical explosion of urban
population but also manifests a disorderly and discontinuous development of urban places. Urban sprawl
may also be termed as process which takes place slowly or rapidly to occupy the adjacent land of a city or
a town and brings about socio-cultural changes in the land use pattern, demographic features (population growth, literacy rate, occupational structure etc.) and transforms the economic livelihood of the
people of the concerned area. In the present study villages within 10 km. circular buffer of Burdwan
Municipality have been chosen which are located in Barddhaman - I & II blocks of Barddhaman district,
West Bengal. The objectives of the study are two folds- First to identify the direction and type of urban
sprawl which has taken place in BarddhamanI and BarddhamanII block during 1971 - 2001 and second,
try to assess the nature of influence of this process on the social and economic condition of the study area
by selecting three villages within 10 km. circular buffer of Burdwan Municipality. To identify the direction
and type of urban sprawl, toposheets, LISS III Images of different time span of the study area have been
considered along with different secondary data sources. Village level Census data have been analyzed for
four consecutive census years i.e. 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001 in order to find out the nature of influence
of urban sprawl on the socio-economic aspects of the study area. The analysis of satellite imageries of
different time span has indicated that the urban sprawl has been spreading fast in the surrounding region
of Burdwan Municipality located in both Barddhaman-I and Barddhaman block-II and specially toward
eastern direction where urban sprawl has taken shape of ribbon development along the NH -2 . Another
type of sprawl i.e., leapfrog development have been found in the north-eastern part of the both the blocks
and low density sprawl have been identified in the surrounding region of Burdwan Municipality. The
temporal study (2001-2011) of land use of the three selected villages has revealed interesting nature of
changes and household survey have portrayed socio-economic characteristics related to sprawl.