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Analysis of urban growth pattern using remote sensing and GIS: a case study
of Kolkata, India
B. Bhatta a
a
Senior Systems Engineer, Computer Aided Design Centre, Department of Computer Science &
Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India

Online Publication Date: 01 January 2009

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 International Journal of Remote Sensing
Vol. 30, No. 18, 20 September 2009, 4733–4746

Analysis of urban growth pattern using remote sensing and GIS: a case
study of Kolkata, India

B. BHATTA*
Senior Systems Engineer, Computer Aided Design Centre, Department of Computer
Science & Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata — 700 032, India

(Received 25 September 2007; in final form 14 February 2008)

Urban growth pattern has a direct influence on urban development processes both
at the city and neighbourhood levels, but on the other hand growth pattern is also
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affected by land and housing policy, current built-up area, available developable
area, change in household count, population, economy, and others. Remote sen-
sing and GIS techniques can be used to analyse and model the urban growth
pattern. This study was carried out to identify and analyse the urban growth
pattern of Kolkata, India. Several statistical methods were applied to recognize
and analyse this pattern, which shows increasing dispersed development of the city
with the declining population growth rate. Apart from the derived results, this
study also shows the potentiality of remote sensing and GIS techniques for the
analysis of urban growth patterns.

1. Introduction
Rapid urbanization in the world is quite alarming, especially in developing countries
such as India (Kumar et al. 2007). Urbanization is a process whereby productive
agricultural lands, forests, surface water bodies and groundwater prospects are being
irretrievably lost (Pathan et al. 1989, 1991). This is mainly due to uncontrolled
population growth resulting in serious problems with regards to scarcity of food,
informal settlements, environmental pollutions, destruction of ecological structure,
unemployment, and so on (Maktav and Erber 2005).
Recent generation models of urban dynamics have dealt with diverse themes.
According to Batty (2000), there are currently some 20 or more applications of models
to cities, such as for the diffusion or migration of resident populations (Portugali et al.
1997), competitive location of economic activities (Benati 1997), joint expansion of
urban surfaces and traffic networks (Batty and Xie 1997), generic urban growth
(Clarke et al. 1997) and urban land-use dynamics (Deadman et al. 1993, Batty and
Xie 1994, Phipps and Langlois 1997, White and Engelen 1997, White et al. 1998),
amongst others.
Urban sprawl has become one of the most important issues facing most cities at
the onset of the new millennium. Housing developments and increases in imper-
vious surfaces encroach on lands that were formerly agricultural lands, grasslands,
wetlands, water bodies, and forests. Changes to the landscape occur every day
with significant implications for taxation, quality of life, water quality, agricul-
tural viability, wildlife habitat and social equity. Impervious surfaces are

*Email: basu_bhatta@rediffmail.com
International Journal of Remote Sensing
ISSN 0143-1161 print/ISSN 1366-5901 online # 2009 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/01431160802651967
 4734 B. Bhatta

promoted as useful environmental indicators (Schueler 1994, Arnold and Gibbons

1996, Barnes et al. 2000), and one environmental condition that impervious
surfaces clearly indicate is urbanization (Barnes et al. 2001).
Population data and socio-economic data have a direct relationship with urban
growth. In India, unprecedented population growth coupled with unplanned devel-
opmental activities has resulted in urbanization, which lacks infrastructure facilities
(Sudhira et al. 2004).
Patterns of sprawl and spatio-temporal changes could be identified and analysed
cost effectively and efficiently with the help of remote sensing and geographic infor-
mation systems (GIS) along with ground knowledge. The physical expressions and
patterns of sprawl on landscapes can be detected, mapped, and analysed using remote
sensing and GIS (Barnes et al. 2001).
The pattern of urban growth is a non-typical and sometimes confusing subject.
Decisions made based on this pattern can have significant impact on health, on urban
environment, on the productivity of cities, and on human development as a whole. It
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should be analysed in several dimensions before drawing any conclusion. The main
objective of this study is to recognize and analyse the urban growth pattern of Kolkata
city by comparing and modelling temporal information on built-up area, population,
household count, developable area, number of working persons, and so on. An
additional goal is to interest city administrators and stakeholders to apply this
methodology and models to other cities as well.

2. Study area
Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, was
considered as the study area. It is the main business, commercial and financial hub
of eastern India and the north-eastern states. The city is more than 300 years old and it
served as the capital of India during the British Governance until 1911. One of the
largest metropolitan regions of the world, Kolkata serves as the global example of the
potentials and problems facing mega-cities in developing nations (Banerjee 2005).
Kolkata is located at 22 33¢ N 88 20¢ E on the east bank of River Hooghly (Ganges
Delta) at an elevation of approximate 9 m (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission,
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, February 2000). The city is located
154 km (96 miles) upstream from the Bay of Bengal.
Kolkata city, under the jurisdiction of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC),
now has an area of 185 km2 subdivided into 141 wards. The Kolkata urban agglom-
eration, however, is continuously expanding: the urban agglomeration (Kolkata
Metropolitan Area) is spread over 1750 km2. However, this study is limited to the
KMC area only.
The area is spread linearly along the banks of the River Hooghly in a north–south
direction. The east–west dimension of the proper city stretches from the Hooghly
River in the west to roughly the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass in the east.

3. Data and methodology

The following remote sensing imageries were used to extract the built-up area of
KMC:
l Landsat Multispectral Scanner (MSS) image (path 148, row 45) from 5
December 1975
 Analysis of urban growth pattern 4735

l Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) image (path 138, row 44) from 14 November
1990
l Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) image (path 138, row 44)
from 17 November 2000
l Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) Resourcesat 1 Linear Imaging Self-scanning
Sensor (LISS) III image (path 108, row 56) from 5 February 2005.
Spectral details of the aforementioned imageries are given in table 1. It is worth
mentioning that the thermal bands of Landsat TM and ETM+ were not considered
for the analysis.
The vector map of Kolkata (KMC area) was used for clipping and subsetting the
satellite images. Other ancillary data such as topographical maps, land-use/cover
maps, municipal ward maps, and census data were also used either as references or
for analytical purposes.
The images were obtained as standard products, i.e. geometrically and radiome-
trically corrected. However, due to the several standards and references used by the
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image supplying agencies, the overlay of the images did not match with considerable
accuracy. To solve this problem, images were co-registered so that the overlay
matched with the sub-pixel accuracy. Nearest-neighbour resampling was used to
transform the images retaining original pixel values.
Images from different sensors have differences in their spatial resolution. One
approach to encounter this problem is to resample the higher resolution images so
that they match the resolution of the lowest spatial resolution image. But resampling
of an image to change the pixel size either averages the neighbouring pixel values (in
the case of bi-linear or bi-cubic) or pixel dropout/duplication occurs (in the case of
nearest neighbour). For this reason, images were kept without changing the pixel size,
despite the varying accuracy level of classification with the different spatial, spectral
and radiometric resolutions. This variation was accepted not to compromise with the
spatial detail and pixel value.
In the next step, co-registered images were clipped by the vector map of the KMC
area. The clipped images were then classified using a nonparametric parallelepiped
classifier to extract the built-up area (along with other impervious surfaces). It is
worth mentioning that if the study is concerned only with urban growth, that is only
the classes of urban and non-urban use are under consideration, detailed land-use

Table 1. Spectral details of the satellite imageries.

Landsat TM and Resourcesat-1

Landsat MSS Landsat ETM+ LISS-III

Spectral Spectral Spectral

Bands resolution (m) Bands resolution (m) Bands resolution (m)

4 0.5–0.6
5 0.6–0.7
6 0.7–0.8
7 0.8–1.1
1 0.45–0.52
2 0.52–0.60
3 0.63–0.69
4 0.76–0.90
5 1.55–1.75
7 2.08–2.35
2 0.52–0.59
3 0.62–0.68
4 0.77–0.86
5 1.55–1.70
 4736 B. Bhatta

maps are no longer necessary and a simple binary classification of remotely sensed
data is enough.
The classified images were then compared with the topographical maps, available
land-use/cover maps for the respective time period and with current ground checks to
assess the accuracy. An overall accuracy between 71% and 84% was achieved and
agreed to proceed with.
Kolkata is highly heterogeneous in nature. The north–south expansion is
roughly divided into North, Central and South Kolkata. The North Kolkata
locality is the oldest part of the city. South Kolkata grew mostly after indepen-
dence and consists of elite localities. Central Kolkata houses the central business
district (CBD) area. Much of the city (mainly in the eastern part) was originally
a vast wetland, reclaimed over the decades to accommodate the city’s burgeon-
ing population. West side contains a very large dock area, industries, residence,
and wetlands as well. Due to the heterogeneous nature of the city, in this study,
it has been subdivided into five different subparts considering the distribution of
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different land-use/cover classes as shown in figure 1. Table 2 summarizes the

characteristics of these zones and their associated ward numbers. It is important
to note that the conventional zoning concept used by local people or authorities
has not been considered; rather, land-use/cover was emphasized for demarcating
the zones.
Built-up areas for each zone and for each temporal image were calculated by
clipping the classified images with the respective vector zone, and then multiplying
the number of pixels in each zone by the pixel size.
The dates of remote sensing data were different from the dates of the decennial
census dates (2001, 1991, 1981, . . .). However, the image of November 1990 can
be associated with the census data of 1991, and the image of November 2000 can
be associated with the census data of year 2001. But, the 1975 and 2005 images
very much deviated from the census dates. Therefore, it was necessary to inter-
polate the census data, so that the population figures corresponded to the dates of
the images.
City population growth was assumed to be exponential, and the annual growth rate
was calculated using the following equation (Angel et al. 2005):

Ptþ10 ¼ Pt ð1 þ gÞ10 (1)

where Pt is the population of census year t, Pt+10 is the population of census year t+10,
and g is the annual population growth rate between census years t and t+10.
The population of 1975 (P1975) was interpolated using the following formula:

P1975 ¼ P1971 ð1 þ gÞ19751971 ¼ 3 869 278 (2)

where P1971 is the population of 1971 = 3 714 700, and g is the annual population
growth rate between 1971 and 1981  0.0102445990.
The population of 2005 (P2005) was interpolated using the following formula:

P2005 ¼ P2001 ð1 þ gÞ20052001 ¼ 4 650 187 (3)

where P2001 is the population of 2001 = 4 572 876, and g is the annual population
growth rate between 1991 and 2001  0.0042000523.
 Analysis of urban growth pattern 4737
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Figure 1. Parts of Kolkata considered for analysis.

Table 2. Subparts of Kolkata and their associated ward numbers.

Total
Part name Wards Characteristics area (km2)

Northern zone(N) 1–6, 13, 14, 29–32, 34, 35 Developed, mainly residential, 16
concrete dominated
mix in nature
Central zone(C) 7–12, 15–28, 36–56, 59–78, Fully developed, business 56
81–93, 105 cum residential, mainly
concrete in nature
Western zone(W) 79, 80, 128–141 Industrial and residential 39
mix, large dock area,
some wards are developing,
mix in nature
Southern zone(S) 94–104, 111–127 Newly developed 46
(or developing), mainly
residential, mix in nature
Eastern zone(E) 33, 57, 58, 106–110 Mainly wetland (mixed with 28
agriculture and trees),
developing

In the case of P2005, it was necessary to calculate g by considering the populations of

2001 and 2011. However, it was calculated as the annual population growth rate
between 1991 and 2001, as the population of 2011 is not known to us. However, any
reliable predicted value for 2011 can also be used to derive g.
Figure 2 shows the interpolated values superimposed with the observed population
data on census dates. This figure acceptably validates the quality of the interpolation
model.
 4738 B. Bhatta

Figure 2. Observed census data (1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001) and interpolated data (1975 and
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2005) of population.

The resulted population data and built-up/non built-up area data were then used
for analysis.

4. Result and discussion

4.1 Built-up area
The classification of the satellite images into built-up (with other impervious) and
non-built up areas for four time instants has resulted in the creation of abstract and
highly-simplified visual images of the study area (figure 3), which are important
evidence of urban extent and growth pattern.
By examining the classified images, the growth pattern of the city in each zone, the
infill of the open spaces between already built-up areas, the extent of urban area, etc.
can be identified intuitively. However, to describe these different patterns intelli-
gently, to understand how they change over time, to compare each zone with others
numerically, or to explain the variations among these patterns statistically, we need to
select quantitative measures that summarize one or another of their properties. The
following sections are intended to identify and/or quantify these comparative growth
pattern parameters.

4.2 Built-up area and urban growth

The percentage of an area covered by impervious surfaces such as asphalt and
concrete is a straightforward measure of development (Barnes et al. 2001). It can be
safely considered that developed areas have greater proportions of impervious sur-
faces, i.e. the built-up areas compared to the lesser-developed areas (Sudhira et al.
2004).
Percentages of built-up area (and other impervious surfaces) were calculated for
each zone and for each image (table 3), which clearly shows the pattern of urban
growth and the concentration of built-up area. This matrix shows a very high
concentration of built-up area in the north and central zone since 1975, and the
growth rate is also very low because of built-up saturation. Expansion of the south
zone is highly alarming followed by the east zone.
 Analysis of urban growth pattern 4739
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Figure 3. Classified images of different years showing built-up areas in black.

Table 3. Percentage of built-up area.

Zone

Year N C W S E KMC

1975 80.15 77.89 28.37 11.39 24.81 43.08

1990 84.21 85.61 50.62 58.25 34.44 63.56
2000 86.26 85.63 52.89 63.94 51.33 68.20
2005 87.59 85.63 54.18 70.31 69.33 72.89

N, Northern zone; C, Central zone; W, Western zone; S, Southern zone; E, Eastern zone; KMC,
Kolkata Municipal Corporation.

4.3 Proportion of population and proportion of built-up area

The proportion of the total population in a region to the total built-up area of the
region is a measure of quantifying sprawl (Sudhira et al. 2004). In this study, the
population of every zone for two recent census years (1991 and 2001) was calculated
by adding the census populations of all the administrative wards of the respective
zone. In this sense, the definition of the zone population was inclusive, as it included
 4740 B. Bhatta

Table 4. Proportion of built-up area minus proportion of population.

Zone

Year N C W S E

1991 -0.01603 -0.13556 0.068583 0.065383 0.017625

2001 -0.01342 -0.12945 0.05171 0.052658 0.038504

N, Northern zone; C, Central zone; W, Western zone; S, Southern zone; E, Eastern zone.

the non-built-up areas in these zones as well. Therefore, it is better to relate the
proportion of population and proportion of built-up area for each zone instead of
regarding the population as being a function of the built-up area.
The proportion of population and proportion of built-up area were calculated
by dividing the population and built-up area of the respective zone by the total
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population and total area of KMC, respectively. If we subtract the proportion of

population from the proportion of built-up area, the result will vary within the
range of –1 to 1 as shown in table 4, where 0 (or near to 0) indicates average
conditions. Higher negative values indicate population crowding, which may cause
serious environmental problems, traffic congestion, and a minimum of social (and
other) facilities. Higher positive values indicate higher per capita consumption of
built-up area.
The per capita land consumption refers to utilization of all the land develop-
ment initiatives such as the commercial, industrial, educational, and recreational
establishments along with the residential establishments per person. Since most of
the initiatives pave the way for the creation of jobs and subsequently help with
earning livelihoods, the development of land is seen as a direct consequence of
this and hence one can conclude that the per capita land consumption is inclusive
of all the associated land development (Sudhira et al. 2004). Higher per capita
consumption of built-up area indicates a better environment and extended
facilities.

4.4 Growth rate of population and built-up areas

The growth rate of built-up areas is generally related to population growth rate.
Population growth forces the built-up area to expand. Urban sprawl can also be
identified hypothetically by careful examination of built-up area expansion rate and
population growth rate.
Figure 4 shows the population growth rate and built-up growth rate for several
time spans. This clearly indicates that growth rate of built-up areas is always
higher than the growth rate of population. It was very high during the time span
1975–1991, and 2001–2005. This contradicts the findings of Richardson et al.
(2000) that cities in developing countries are becoming significantly more compact
in spite of decelerating population growth and the beginnings of decentralization.
It also contradicts the findings of Acioly and Davidson (1996) that there was
evidence that a general process of change was leading to more compact cities in
developing countries. In the case of Kolkata, though the city has shown a trend to
compactness during 1991–2001, the recent and overall trend is towards dispersion,
which is an indication of urban sprawl.
 Analysis of urban growth pattern 4741

Figure 4. Growth rate of built-up areas and population.

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4.5 Proportion of household and proportion of built-up areas

Built-up areas generally increase with the increase in the number of households. But
how they differ from zone to zone is an important issue, which may help us to identify
the compactness of urban growth, urban sprawl, and to evaluate the built-up density
scenario.
A simple approach may be to relate the household density with built-up density for
each zone individually. But these variables within a zone are never independent;
rather they are influenced by the neighbours of the respective zone and the entire
city as well. Therefore, it would be better to relate the proportion of households in a
zone to the total households of the city with the proportion of built-up areas within
the respective zone to the total built-up areas of the city. In this study this was
calculated for each zone for the year 2001 as shown in figure 5. The relation between
these two proportions (B–A in figure 5) clearly shows the compactness/dispersion of a
zone. If we consider 0 as the ideal condition, then positive values show the compact-
ness and negative values show dispersion.

Figure 5. Relationship between proportion of households and built-up areas.

 4742 B. Bhatta

4.6 Economy and urban growth

Economic growth is also responsible for urban growth (Almeida et al. 2005), assum-
ing that there is a definite relationship between people’s economic status, available
area to be built up and expansion of built-up area. Several economic parameters can
be considered to relate to urban growth. One very common parameter of this type is
per capita income. But per capita income averages the data. It is necessary to relate the
built-up area with the number of working persons only, because they are mainly
responsible for new construction. In this study the percentage of workers and the
percentage of built-up area for each zone for two recent census periods (1991 and
2001) were calculated. Changes in worker percentage and built-up percentage were
also calculated as shown in table 5.
This table clearly shows that a built-up area cannot grow at the same rate as
working persons, because if an area is already at built-up saturation, then the
increase in the number of working persons will not influence the built-up area.
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Therefore, we need to account the percentage of area on which new construction

can be made (which is a portion of total non-built-up area). Due to lack of
information, in this study, the percentage of non-built-up area has been consid-
ered to model the relationship between economy, developable area and built-up
growth. The following simple model shows the trend of built-up change in relation
to the change in worker percentage and percentage of available area to be built-up
for a specific zone:

Wi · Bi
Ei ¼ (4)
Pn
Wi
i¼1

where Ei is the change in the percentage of built-up area between 1991 and 2001 for the
ith zone, Wi is the change in the percentage of working persons between 1991 and 2001
for the ith zone, and Bi is the percentage of available area for the ith zone in 1991 on
which new construction can be made. This can be calculated by the percentage of
non built-up area minus the percentage of area on which construction is not
possible or permissible. n is the total number of zones.
The above model shows the trend of change in the percentage of built-up areas
(Ei) between 1991 and 2001 for each zone as shown in table 6. The result supports
the reality as shown in table 5. Some variation occurs due to the consideration of
entire non built-up area as developable area, which is not true. However, this
model requires tests on other cities also. It has a major limitation that it assumes
Wi can not be 0 or less than 0. The zones should not be considered where Wi is 0
or less than 0.

Table 5. Change in percentage of workers and in built-up areas (1991–2001).

Zone

N C W S E

Workers 5.16 4.32 2.09 5.21 5.38

Built-up area 2.05 0.02 2.28 5.69 16.89

N, Northern zone; C, Central zone; W, Western zone; S, Southern zone; E, Eastern zone.
 Analysis of urban growth pattern 4743

Table 6. Predicted change in percentage of built-up areas (1991–2001).

Zone

N C W S E

Built-up area change 3.51 2.67 4.44 9.36 15.18

N, Northern zone; C, Central zone; W, Western zone; S, Southern zone; E, Eastern zone.

4.7 Built-up areas and Shannon’s entropy

Shannon’s entropy method is very useful for calculating the compactness or disper-
sion of urban growth (Yeh and Li 2001, Li and Yeh 2004, Lata et al. 2001, Sudhira
et al. 2004, Kumar et al. 2007), which is an indicator of urban sprawl. In this study,
Shannon’s entropy was computed to detect and quantify the urban sprawl phenom-
enon. Shannon’s entropy (Hn) has been calculated by:
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X
n
Hn ¼  Pi loge ðPi Þ (5)
i¼1

where Pi is the proportion of the variable in the ith zone, i.e. the proportion of built-
up area (as a percentage) in each zone, calculated by: built-up area percentage in ith
zone/total of built-up area percentage of all zones. n = total number of zones = 5.
The value of entropy ranges from 0 to loge(n) (i.e. 1.609). A value of 0 indicates that
the distribution of built-up areas is very compact, while values closer to loge(n) reveal
that the distribution of built-up areas is dispersed. Higher values of entropy indicate
the occurrence of sprawl.
Table 7 shows that the entropy values are very much higher than the halfway mark
of loge(n) (i.e. 0.805) and it is increasing with time. It clearly shows that the city is
becoming more dispersed despite the declining population growth rate.

5. Conclusions
The discussion in the preceding sections has directed attention to the magnitude and
pattern of change in urban growth of Kolkata for the last few decades, which should
be very helpful in terms of guiding future planning and policy-making for the city.
The analysis shows a clear indication of urban sprawl or dispersion in growth for
the city of Kolkata; it can be concluded that cities in developing countries do not
always become more compact with the declining rate of population growth.
The key issue facing decision makers at local, national and international levels is
not whether or not urban expansion will take place, but rather what is likely to be the
scale of urban expansion and what needs to be done now to adequately prepare for it.
The models introduced and discussed in the preceding sections can be utilized to
provide some guidance as to the scale of change likely to result if trends of the past

Table 7. Shannon’s entropy for different time periods.

1975 1990 2000 2005

Entropy 1.394 1.558 1.584 1.595

 4744 B. Bhatta

decades continue. For instance, if present trends in population growth, income

growth, and change in the value of available land to be built up per unit area continue
for the next 25 years, the question of what levels of urban growth this city will have to
prepare for can be discovered using the percentage of increase in built-up areas.
The models in the preceding sections can also be applied to smaller administrative
boundaries (e.g. ward boundaries of a city) for micro level analysis. Each different
zone has a different level of compactness leading to different patterns of growth.
Therefore, a single policy for the entire city never works with equal degrees of
effectiveness for all.
To make the city more compact, proponents may recommend policies that aim to
restrict urban expansion—in one way or another—seeking to reduce the amount of
land for absorbing urban population and income growth. They perhaps suggest
increasing existing densities, encouraging infill, zoning and land subdivision regula-
tions, placing urban growth limits, changing the nature of land, or land conservation.
However, the merits of restricting urban expansion and encouraging infill and
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intensification of existing urban areas—even in the cities in industrialized coun-

tries—are by no means clear, nor is it self-evident that these are desired by the
majority of urban residents. Even in the best of circumstances, compact city policies
may have a marginal effect on the overall level of urban land consumption (Angel
et al. 2005).
The case for densification and intensification in the cities of developing countries
(like Kolkata)—where densities are, on average, three times higher than densities in
the cities of industrialized and developed countries—is even less clear (Angel et al.
2005). Therefore the merits of urban densification postulated for Kolkata or the like
seem far less convincing, where most of the city area is overcrowded and lacks
sufficient urban facilities, where property rights are not strictly enforced, where the
city has grown almost without prior city planning, where the city lacks future town-
planning schemes and even lacks current land-use/cover maps, where enforcement is
intermittent and often corrupt, and where a large part of the citizenry cannot afford
minimum standard shelter.
Needless to say, it is more expensive to provide trunk urban infrastructure in built-up
areas—especially in areas developed by the informal sector (as is the case for Kolkata)—
than to provide such services, or at least to protect the right-of-way needed for such
services before building takes place. While there are many reasons for neglecting to study
the past and present of urban growth pattern to prepare for the inevitable future growth
of cities, the absence of even minimal preparation for urban expansion—on both the
activist and the regulatory fronts—is, no doubt, an inefficient, inequitable and unsus-
tainable practice, imposing great economic and environmental costs on societies that can
ill afford them. This paper aims to present several models using remote sensing/GIS
techniques to study the past and understand the present. Profiting from this knowledge,
the future planning can be done accordingly. Our understanding of the complexity of
urban growth pattern essentially provides us with some of the tools necessary to meet it
in an efficient, equitable and sustainable manner in the years to come.
In summary, this study opened with an observation about the important role of
analytic models of urban growth pattern, proceeded to use some standard classical
and some new models to derive testable hypotheses about factors that influence urban
extent and growth. It focuses on the scope of research/application for the city planners
and other stakeholders in developing nations. The theory and models of urban spatial
growth pattern that are supported by preceding findings should prove useful for
 Analysis of urban growth pattern 4745

devising policy responses to the problems associated with preparing for urban expan-
sion. However, there still remain some important policy issues for which analytical
support has to be made available. Future analytical research, using the global dataset,
should shed some light on these issues in the near future.

Acknowledgment
The author wishes to acknowledge the Director, Computer Aided Design Centre,
Jadavpur University, Kolkata for providing necessary facilities to execute this study.
The author is also grateful to Earth Science Data Interface, Global Land Cover
Facility, for providing free Landsat data.

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