Changing Urbanisation Scenario & It’s Effect on Urban Environment: A Study of Kolkata (KMC), Salt Lake and New Town

Abstract

The literature of urban history evidenced that, urbanization throughout the world occurred either planned way or unplanned way. Planned urbanization is a consequence of unplanned urbanization of old cities dramatically practiced after the Second World War. This study seeks to investigate the effect of types of urbanization (either planned or unplanned) on the urban environment. Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) is one of the largest and oldest municipal corporation in India and Kolkata is the capital city of West Bengal which emerged not in a planned way whereas Salt Lake and New Town emerged as planned urban segments in the recent past. Several environmental problems i.e., air pollution, rising temperature, shrinking of green space and open space etc. increasing day by day in both the unplanned and planned urban places. This work has been made a comparative study of the urban environment of KMC, Salt Lake and New Town Rajarhat using air quality data of West Bengal Pollution Control Board (WBPCB), percentage of open space and Land Surface Temperature acquired from satellite imageries especially in OLI band. Different statistical techniques, as well as GIS software have been deployed to fulfil the objectives of the work. The outcomes of the present work conclude that the planned city offers a better urban environment to the dwellers than an unplanned city.