Spatiotemporal urban expansion in Pune metropolis, India using remote sensing

•A detailed spatiotemporal analysis of urban expansion and urban typologies of Pune metropolis at unit administrative scale.•The speed of the urbanization has doubled during 2001–2013 in comparison of 1992–2001.•The areas under civil administration show positive urban growth whereas under defence administration show marginal growth.•Varied urban expansion patterns are observed in Pune metropolis in support of diffusion–coalescence phase of urbanization.

Indian cities are expanding at an unprecedented rate. The speed of development poses a challenge for urban planners, as the expansion of cities frequently outpaces the planning process. This leads to further challenges for urban planners, namely i) the database for the planning is often outdated and ii) processes and patterns of unplanned urban growth are not accounted for appropriately. This paper presents an approach to address these challenges by utilizing generally available and inexpensive remote sensing data to study i) the land use and land cover change and ii) by analyzing the extent of urban areas to study the patterns and processes of urban growth. We assesses land-use/land-cover for three years (1992, 2001, 2013) using multi-temporal Landsat datasets. A detailed spatiotemporal analysis of urban expansion and typologies of urban growth at the scale of individual administrative units. The dynamics of urban growth was quantified using different metrics of urban expansion. Three types of urban expansion patterns were identified in the Pune metropolis, i) coalescence phase of urbanization in the main city areas, ii) diffusion phase in the suburbs and iii) marginal growth in the cantonments. The overall process of urban expansion in the Pune metropolis can thus be referred to as a diffusion–coalescence pattern. Furthermore, our results show that the speed of the urban expansion in the Pune metropolis area has doubled from 2001 to 2013 as compared to 1992–2001. Urban land has increased at the cost of grasslands, barren and agricultural lands. The percentage of change is high in the suburbs under semi-urban and village council jurisdictions, whereas in terms of total growth, areas under the municipal corporation jurisdictions are among the highest contributors to urban expansion. Administrative units governed by cantonment boards have shown marginal growth as compared to the civil administrative units in the study area.