Spatio-temporal dynamics of urban morphology using geoinformatics: study area Bhopal and Indore

Abstract

Urban morphology is a term which is an integral part of urban ecosystem and depicts the different characteristics of a city such as settlements, built form, landscapes, land use, land cover, spatial and built up structure in general and typically to street pattern, lot (or, in the UK, plot) pattern and building pattern, sometimes referred to collectively as urban grain. This study is important because urban morphology approaches human settlements as generally unconscious products that emerge over long periods, through the accrual of successive generations of building activity. This leaves traces that serve to structure subsequent building activity and provide opportunities and constraints for city-building processes, such as land subdivision, infrastructure development, or building construction. Development is one of the major attractive force for inviting people from one part of the city or an area to another. With a planning area of 601.2 sq.km in 2005. Bhopal had the density which ranks third lowest in the list of Metropolitan cities having lesser density than the average density, which is almost half as compared to that of Indore. So thesis aims at to assess the spatio-temporal dynamics of urban morphology of the metropolitan cities of Madhya Pradesh having planning area more than 500sq.km for three decades. The objectives to achieve the aim is to identify the spatio-temporal changes of urban morphology and the related issues for the cities under consideration, to investigate and analyse the causative factors of dynamics, to forecast the future dynamics of the cities based on the previous, existing, and emerging trends. The expected outcome is the detection of the changes with identifying the causative factors and finally forecasting the future dynamics.The study is carried out in different stages started with the literature review, understanding the key terminology, desktop study review, site visit, and collection of data from primary and secondary sources identifying the causative factors which are indicated through maps and data analysis. The proposals are in the form of maps depicting the tentative areas of spread of the built up where development might take place this prediction has been done through Shannon entropy for checking the spread and through primary survey conducted and the findings of the master plan .