Identifying peri-urban growth in small and medium towns using GIS and remote sensing technique: A case study of English Bazar Urban Agglomeration, West Bengal, India

Land in the peri-urban interface is of vital importance as there is a lack of clarity in the planning and policies in this region whether they should be governed under the authority of rural administration. In general, these areas are frequently ignored as a specific area in the study of urbanization being neither pure urban nor pure rural. In this regard, an attempt has been taken to detect the spatio-temporal dynamics of sprawl, the nature of land transformation taken place in the identified peripheral settlements with high probability of urban development within the buffer zone of 2.5 km around the boundaries of the two major urban bodies of Malda i.e. English Bazar municipality an Old Malda municipality. The secondary data of Census of India of 2011and Landsat TM imageries (1987, 2003, 2011 and 2015) have been employed to detect the evolutionary process with the view to capture the urban land-use growth by Land Use-Land Cover classification. The result shows that the built-up area has increased around 30% over the course of 28 years span. Computations of Shannon's Entropy, Urbanisation intensity index, built-up density have helped to explore the degree of transition taking place in each spatial unit under investigation. The spatial metrics with the gradient approach has revealed that beyond the buffer of 7 km from the city centre the increase of residential land uses is maximum which is characterised by a fragmented pattern with nearest entropy value to log N. The suitability analysis in search of most prospective future urban centre suggests the maximum distribution of urban units in the western front of the ULBs.