Modelling of urban growth boundary using geoinformatics

Urban growth boundary (UGB) is a regulatory measure of local government for delineating limits of urban growth over a period of time. Land within the UGB allows urban development, while the land outside of this boundary remains primarily non-urban. The increasing popularity of UGB demands an easy and effective method to design this boundary. This article introduces a new concept, Ideal Urban Radial Proximity (IURP), to designate a spatial UGB using geoinformatics in the digital environment. The Kolkata urban agglomeration was considered to demonstrate this model. Remotely sensed imageries of three temporal instants (years 1975, 1990 and 2005) were considered to determine the information on urban extent and growth of the city. These data were then used as inputs to model the UGB for the years 2020 and 2035. The proposed model discourages scattered development and increase in urban growth rate. It preserves urban vegetation, water bodies and any other important non-urban areas within the inner city space. The IURP concept will also be useful to make the cities circular and polycentric urban blobs into a monocentric tract. Apart from the proposed model and derived results, this research also proves the potential of geoinformatics in modelling a UGB.