Linking socio-economic conditions with blue and green spaces

Abstract

Our Urban blue and Green Space are at a constant pressure due to the densification of urban structures, unplanned growth, urban sprawl and spatial inequality within the urban and urban fringes. These are causes of degradation and pollution of these urban blue and green spaces. Spatial inequality exist in both the urban and rural areas. The unplanned development also result in inequitable distribution of environmental components resulting an environmentally inequitable in urban areas. This inequitable distribution of environmental components may have some relation with socio economic condition, race and ethnicity of urban residential areas but such studies have only been focused on developed countries and this linkage between socio economic condition and environmental components are missing in terms of Indian context. Kolkata Metropolitan Area (KMA) being one of the largest metropolitan region in India is facing environmental degradation. Increase in urban population and unplanned development is main reason behind the disappearing of the traditional water bodies which creates an ecological imbalance and increases water pollution. Not only the water bodies are but also the green cover of the KMA is also threatened, the tree cover has reduced at an alarming rate as the open spaces are constantly being converted to built-up areas. The rules and regulation as per Development control regulation (DCR) are not well described for which there is rapid conversion land, water bodies and deforestation of trees. So the study aims to identifying the linkages between socio- economic conditions and the environmental quality with respect to our blue and green spaces in an urban context. The study is based on identification of socio- economic micro areas (wards) based on the socio economic indicators as per different literature within the selected a municipality (South Dum Dum Municipality) in KMA. Then analyse the temporal change in land use, land cover and different environmental parameters. The environmental parameters selected are surface runoff, land surface temperature and diversity. Finally after mapping the land use land cover, calculating surface runoff by using rational method, diversity indexing using Shannon index. For identification of land surface temperature in a temporal scale satellite image satellite image interpretation have been applied. After the temporal results of all the land use land cover, surface runoff, diversity and land surface temperature has been derived it is then related with the socio economic condition of the micro areas. As the study was conducted on 4 wards and each ward belonging to a particular socio economic condition, the correlation between socio economic condition and rate of degradation in environmental quality was determined. Finally the result revealed that there has been a negative impact in study area but the impact with respect to degradation in environmental quality is more in terms of the low status area than in a medium or high status area. These results emphasizes that we need to critically revisit our development control regulation and formulated proper guidelines for future development of the cities.