Month: July 2016

Stages of Town Development

 1) Classification by Sir Patrick Geddes

Stages

Properties

Primary

Town, which produces human necessities such as agricultural village

Secondary

Town, which functions as entry of exchange such as marketing town

Tertiary

Town, which provides residential, educational and recreational facilities

 2) Classification by Lewis Mumford

Stages

Properties

Eopolis

The Eopolis indicates the first stage of town as a village community whose economic base is agriculture.

Polis

The Polis indicates and association of population with some mechanization and specialization.

Metropolis

The metropolis is a city or town which serves as a capital of a state or region.

Megalopolis

The megalopolis indicates the first stage of decline in town or city due to mega problems and issues, or the reign of town or city shows the signs of decline and deterioration.

Tyranopolis

Tyranopolis is the town or city which shows drastic deteriorating situation for example the trade depression or military powers may occur with different war lords.

Necropolis

Necropolis is the worst stage of town or city. For example the citizens are shifting to rural areas or village due to war, disease or economic break down. In that case the town may recover from it after a large internal of time.

3) Classification by Griffith Taylor

Stages

Properties

Infantile

This is the first stage of town in which a city is not yet divided in separate zones or the city in which zoning regulations is not being prepared yet.

Juvenile

The juvenile stage of town or city indicates that, shops are being separated from the houses or residential area and there are some factories or an industry has been established at a minimal level.

Mature

The mature stage of town shows the divisions of residential zone, commercial zone and industrial zone in the city or the land use and zoning regulations in town shows the stage of mature city / town.

Senile

Finally the senile stage of town indicates the physical decay in most of the portions of the city or the physical, social & economic degradation is evident in the built environment of town or city.

 4) Classification by Harold MacLean Lewis

Type

Population

Eopolis or Infantile Municipality Town

2500 to 5000

Polis or Juvenile Town

5000 to 10000

Mature Trade/Industrial Town

10000 to 25000

Metropolis or Medium Size City

25000 to 50000

Megalopolis Intermediate City

50000 to 100000

Trade/Industry/Service Sector City

100000 to 250000

Primate City

250000 to 500000

Tyranopolis or a Metropolitan City

500000 to 1000000

Senile City or Mega City

1000000 or more

5) Urban & Rural Classification of Towns & Cities (By Census of India)

Class

Class of Range of Population

Class I

100,000 and above

Class II

50,000 to 99,999

Class II

20,000 to 49,999

Class IV

10,000 to 19,999

Class V

5,000 to 9,999

Class VI

Below 5,000


Land Suitability Analysis

 Rapid urbanization and consequent haphazard growth of cities result in deterioration of infrastructure facilities, loss of agricultural land, water bodies, open spaces, and many micro-climatic changes. This unprecedented growth in city population put pressure on urban amenities and led to their uneven distribution. Many cities witnessed alarming population growth rates in the last thirty years, thus resulted in various problems like pollution, traffic jam, leap-frog development, uneven provision of urban amenities etc. The present study attempted to find out the urban land suitability for the provision of urban amenities. Land use suitability assessment is a key determinant in any urban and suburban planning and decision-making process. The suitability assessment is carried out through Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model using a set of criteria involving geo-physical and socioeconomic variables. The variables taken for the study are slope, altitude, land use/land cover and existing amenity status. 

Suitability analysis is the process and procedures used to establish the suitability of a system according to the needs of a stakeholder. Urban development and migration to urban areas are global phenomena’s especially in third world countries. Thus, many small cities and isolated populations are rapidly changing into large metropolitan cities.This rapid increase of urban population causes high level impact on the urban environment and creates many problems such as unplanned sprawl, inadequate housing facilities, traffic congestion, insufficient drainage, sewerage problem and lack of other amenities. In this context, finding suitable area for further development or evaluation of land suitability for urban land use planning to overcome undesirable urban growth and protect environment around cities becomes all the more important. In most of the third world countries people are constructing residential buildings without considering resources for these new residential areas. Therefore, it becomes the government’s problem to provide required resources for these areas. In order to find suitable site for construction of an amenity, it is required to use sophisticated analysis with consideration of large numbers of critical issues such as technical, environmental, physical, social and many others. Site suitability analysis is the process of determining the fitness of a given tract of land for a defined use. Remote Sensing, GIS, GPS and AHP method is a vital tool for identification, comparison and multi-criterion decision making analysis of urban development site’s proper planning and management. 

Since site selection and suitability process are related to geospatial issues, geographical information system (GIS) allows using data related parameters for suitability modelling. One of the advantages of using GIS in site suitability analysis is the capability of GIS in development of alternative scenarios for urban development. Suitability analysis in a GIS context is a geographic or GIS-based process used to determine the appropriateness of a given area for a particular use. The basic premise of GIS suitability analysis is that each aspect of the landscape has intrinsic characteristics that are to some degree either suitable or unsuitable for the activities being planned. Suitability is determined through systematic, multi-factor analysis of the different aspects of the problem. Model inputs include a variety of physical, cultural, and economic factors. The results are often displayed on a map that is used to highlight areas from high to low suitability. A GIS suitability model typically answers the question, ‘where is the best location? Land suitability analysis is used for site selection, impact studies and land use planning. Land use planning plays an important role in site development, urban renewal and achievement of sustainable urban development. Suitability analysis is critical for both marketing and merchandising purposes. The GIS has different applications in urban health studies and can also be used as a decision support tool to allocate health services so that they are geographically accessible for the population that they intend to serve. 

The overcrowding of the capital has resulted in many people being confined to small areas,
making planning of the area difficult. Most cities in Mongolia are not planned according to landuse and it is possible to find all kinds of land-uses within a small area. It is therefore necessary to
classify land-use types within the cities, thus identifying the needed spaces for urban
development using land suitability analysis. Additionally, land suitability analysis is valuable not
only for urban planning but in all land management problems.

In addition, GIS (Geographical Information System) is a useful tool for land-use suitability
mapping and analysis for urban, agriculture, mining and all land-use projects. Hopkins and Collins et al.  defined land-use
suitability analysis as identifying the most suitable spatial pattern for future land uses according
to specific requirements, preferences, or predictors of some activity.
GIS has been used to analyse land-use suitability in many situations for ecological approaches for
animal habitat and plant species used GIS to
analyse geographical favourability, Cambell et al.1 and Kalogirou  also employed GIS
in landscape evaluation and planning. GIS can also be used in private and public property
planning. For example, Eastman et al. (1993) and Church (2002) used GIS to select the best sites
for public and private sector facilities, whilst Janssen and Rietvelt used the same GIS for
regional planning. This makes GIS a very important tool for all planning activities.
Land-use suitability may mean different things to different experts based on the intended purpose
for which the land is desired. For the agriculturist, it would mean the suitability of the land for
cultivation of crops, animal husbandry and pasture, and to the urban planner the suitability of the
land for building houses, landfill sites, etc. No matter what the intended purpose or which expert
is involved, the rule of thumb, according to Cova and Church, is to differentiate between
the site selection problem and site search problem. Site selection analysis will best identify a
specific site for a suitable activity based on its known potentials such as location, size, and other
attributes. Different sites are ranked based on their potentials and the best site is chosen. 

The purpose of this study focused on mapping urban and agriculture land suitability so as to use
prior information regarding the present state of different units of the land which will be highly
important when applying site specific management interventions. This is done by linking data on
socio-economic organizational factors and geophysical conditions of the land for decision making
in identifying land management using geospatial techniques. This requires application of
geospatial technologies through the Geographic Information System (GIS) which will provide the
capability to analyse and interpret land suitability modeling on various scales, time and cost
effectively. In land suitability modeling all the factors of environmental conditions will be
weighted based on their level of influence using multicriteria evaluation to produce a land
suitability map. Mapping urban and agricultural land is thus vital to locate and rank which areas
are highly suitable and less suitable, so that coherent managing measures could be suggested and
implemented immediately to plan, protect and use the valuable land planning in a sustainable
manner.

Moreover, land suitability mapping using GIS provides a classification of the urban and
agricultural area into zones each of which has a different likelihood, or risk, of experiencing
specific land using processes. Such maps are fundamental to land-use planning aimed at the
urban and agricultural land. The procedure is based on the processing of directly mapped and
interpreted data, is easy to apply, and allows frequent updating of the land-use planning.


City as a Physical Entity, Social Entity and Political Entity

 Physical Entity (Urban Area)

The first generic form of the city is the physical expanse or area of continuously built-up urbanization. The urban area is generally observable on a clear night from a high flying airplane. The urban area is simply the extension of urbanization. The urban area is not defined by jurisdictional boundaries, though where national statistical authorities define it is necessary to rely on building blocks such as census tracts and municipalities. 

Like metropolitan areas, urban areas can extend across sub national jurisdictional lines (such as state, provincial or regional boundaries) or in special cases, international boundaries. Various terms are used by national statistical authorities in the United Nations.

An urban area will never be the same as a municipality. Usually it will include many municipalities, though in the case of many geographically large municipalities, such as Shanghai, the urban area will be smaller than the core municipality. The Chicago urban area (population over 8,000,000) includes the city of Chicago and many other cities. Some nations formally designate urban areas, which are called “urbanized areas” in the United States, “unites urbaines” in France, “urban areas” in the United Kingdom and Canada, “urban centers” in Australia and “urban agglomerations” in India. An urban area is also an agglomeration. A conurbation is an urban area that forms when two or more urban areas grow together. Four definitions of the city are considered here. 

The first involves the city as a physical entity, or the area devoted to primarily urban uses. This Built City (BC) is perhaps the most familiar perception of the city, largely because it is relatively easy to visualize. The BC forms the core or basis of each of the other three definitions of the city. These are as follows: The Consumption City (an area within which most of the consumption of goods and services occurs in the BC); The Employment City (an area in which the bulk of the employed workforce works in the BC); and The Workforce City (an area upon which the BC draws for a given majority of its labour requirements). These four definitions of the city are brought together and shown to be interrelated.

The Functional City (Metropolitan Area)

The second generic form of the city is the functional expanse, which is also the economic expanse. The metropolitan area includes the built-up urban area and the economically connected territory to the outside. The economic relationship is generally defined by patterns of commuting to work into the urban area. Thus, metropolitan areas constitute labor market areas. Metropolitan areas can extend over subnational boundaries, except in rare cases where there is not free movement of labor (such as between Hong Kong and Shenzhen in China). Further, where free movement of labor is permitted by international agreements, metropolitan areas may cross national boundaries (such as in the European Union or between Switzerland and France, in the Basel and Geneva urban areas). 

Political Entity 

Political entities are basically systems of governing authority organized as governmental power structures. Empires, nation-states, city-states, and kingdoms are just a few examples of political entities. Most political entities are types of states, with the exception of stateless nations and autonomous regions. It is also important to note that when discussing a nation, we’re referring to a group of people with a shared language, religion, ethnicity or other cultural factors. 

Social Entity 

Social entity is an ideological concept in which a society or social structure is viewed as a “living organism”. From this perspective, typically, the relation of social features, e.g. law, family, crime, etc., are examined as they interact with other features of society to meet social needs. All elements of a society or social organism have a function that maintains the stability and cohesiveness of the organism.