Addressing city Sprawl

Abstract

There are 461 million people living in cities and this number is growing by 2.3% every year. Providing the necessary urban infrastructure is an upcoming big challenge as 70 to 80 % of the infrastructure that will be needed by 2050 has not been built yet. Urbanisation and population growth goes hand in hand which increases the demand. The demand of resources, services and ultimately more spaces in terms of land which leads to city sprawl. City sprawl is defined in various manners across the global in terms of various local context but in short it is unplanned, incremental urban growth which is often regarded unsustainable. As a city sprawls or as it urbanizes, essentially there is change of land use from rural to urban and this change brings in various environmental concerns. To address these environmental concerns, it is crucial to identify the areas that go through this conversion of rural to urban land use. This raises an environmental concern of maximize benefits of Urbanisation without compromising the environmental benchmarks. Currently there is a reactive approach for solutions and lack of proactive approach of environmental urban planning. The gap identified through research was lack of incorporating the environmental perspective or lack of environmental plans for periurban areas. There is a gap in development plans implementation and linking their impacts on these peri-urban areas. Over the past three decades, Jaipur district has rapidly urbanized and more than half of the populace is urban population The approach of this thesis is studying the peri-urban areas and examine their features to identify the broad environmental conflicts in these areas. The parameters studied are of land use, water resources and food security, which adds to vulnerability of these areas and the communities living here. The environment of these areas is degraded as there is absence of environmental planning strategies. The aim of the thesis is analysing the peri-urban area to direct development strategies through spatio-environmental planning. Firstly, the parameters and subparameters of spatio-environmental planning are identified. Simultaneously, the ecological zones, which goes beyond administrative boundaries of Jaipur is studied and accordingly the study area boundary for Jaipur is delineated. The delineation of the study area boundary was done through excluding the administrative boundary of the municipal corporation and including the masterplan region boundary along with potential growth centers, watershed and the eco-sensitive areas of the region. The next step of the study is to analyse these parameters and sub-parameters of the delineated area to identify the environmental concerns. Analysing these parameters to cater the challenges is important to incorporate the environmental perspective in the final objective of formulating effective spatial strategies for land use planning. Administrative boundaries prevent a strategic approach to environmental planning and management of the peri-urban interface. Environmental problems in the study area cannot be addressed only from the perspective of the sustainability of urban development or from sectoral interventions in some peri-urban villages but needs contextual solutions at community level and planning at regional level. Environmental degradation in the peri-urban interface cannot be addressed in isolation from the processes taking place in the wider region, so addressing these concerns through transformation of planning system is required. Since these areas are dynamic in nature, local and discrete actions such as community land-use for targeting issue-specific strategies is essential. The regional interventions require appraisal and consideration of environmental concern during planning process. Participatory approach brings in stakeholder consultation and traditional knowledge, whereas producing actual strategic environmental plans help in action and implementation. Environmental planning for peri-urban areas is the chance to rectify city centers predicaments.