Land Use Dynamics and Peri-urban Growth Characteristics

The importance of urban transition is recognized in the literature, but largely underexplored in developing world cities. There are no actual relationships between projections and discussions of spatial growth with urban and regional reality. This paper attempts to fill this gap by assessing the spatio-temporal patterns of land use dynamics in urban and peri-urban areas of Lucknow, which is the capital city of India’s largest State, Uttar Pradesh. It also evaluates to what extent the Master Plan 2021 deviates from the actual reality. The finding shows that patterns of urban growth do not follow Master Plan and even Master Plan deviates profoundly from the preferred land suitability. The multi-temporal land use change statistics reveal two major land transformation trends between 1997 and 2010: ( i) Intensification of urbanization in the central core areas where a few remaining open areas and water bodies were occupied and landfilled to accommodate residential developments. ( ii) Urban expansion in peri-urban/suburban areas through edge expansion and envelopment, where the extension of urban core increased at the cost of permanent crops and pastures. The results indicate that substantial Class I agricultural land was lost due to urban growth during 1997—2010, with an average annual rate of 13 per cent. Around 77 per cent of the available land in the peri-urban areas has weak or very weak suitability for future urban development primarily because of the high conservation and agriculture suitability and incompatibility of physical land use to enable infrastructure. The case is similar to any other developing city and transition country of the global south and may provide useful policy lessons.