Three Decades of Urban Dynamics in India: Exemplifying Haora Sadar Subdivision

Measuring urban built-up area temporally gives an overview of the urbanization process of a place over time. The study has blended both secondary and primary data sources to measure the temporal change of urban built-up area of Haora Sadar Subdivision, Haora District, West Bengal, India. The twin city of Kolkata-Haora has been historically an industrial hotspot. The study has incorporated geospatial techniques of analysing Landsat datasets of Haora Sadar Subdivision between the time period of 1990 and 2016. Shannon’s Entropy method has been used to analyse the change in urban morphometry. The Shannon’s entropy value indicates a gradual and steady shift from dispersed to compact settlement in the study area. This chapter compares the secondary data analysis with the primary survey about the perception of the people living in the subdivision on the changing urban ways of living. The chapter has also incorporated a comparison in urban amenities among the study area, West Bengal, India. The results show that the changes in the built-up area are perfectly in sync with the change in urban amenities such as electricity, banking services, hospitals and schools. The gradual change in the built-up area is negatively impacting the number of open spaces, parks and waterbodies. This gradual shifting from dispersed urban form to compact urban form is posing a challenge to sustainable urban development and human–environment interaction.