T Navya Durga

4669-7

Urbanization is pervasive and recent phenomenon. In present global atmosphere, all nations undergo with the challenges of environment, social, transportation, economy in their respective cities. These issues are commonly occurred in developing countries due to the difference of development in cities and villages . Most of countries focus on development of cities instead of rural areas. Consequently, the urban areas are equipped with infrastructure, public facilities as well as provide employment opportunities compared to the rural areas. Therefore inhabitants are more attracted to migrate in cities to avail hi tech facilities, enhance their lifestyles and ultimately these activities raise numerous urbanization issues. Cities have major role to enhance economic growth and prosperity. The sustainable development of cities largely depends upon their physical, social and institutional infrastructure. An urban area is spatial concentration of people who are working in non-agricultural activities. The essential characteristic is that urban means non-agricultural. Urban can also be explained as a fairly multifaceted concept. Thus to understand the evolution, transformation of urban areas, an area of one sq.km of Ahmedabad city has been studied. The area of study is in Sola gam area which is in north west quadrant of the city. Precinct was pre-dominantly an agricultural area since hundreds of years, but with the development plan 2002 which declared the area to be residential zone R2, the phase of the precinct changed from agricultural land to high rise residential setup. It is not just the reason or determinant for this transformation, BRTS and Metro rail proposal, car based commercial activities are also the pre-dominant determinants.
In the initial stages of development the precinct had detached houses, bungalows as the pre-dominant housing typologies, later with the development of infrastructure such as road network more crowd was invited which changed the housing typology to semi-detached houses, row houses and low rise apartments.
Slowly commercial and institutional land use came into picture to support the residential sector. Later with BRTS and Metro rail proposal the FSI regulations have changed which increased the land value and as well allowed for high rise constructions such as offices, commercial outlets and high rise apartments. These offices and commercial outlets have created jobs for the residents.
Infrastructural facilities such as road network and solid waste management, sewerage, storm water drain systems are designed well as the precinct is developed recently. But all these facilities should be maintained well as there is a scope for huge development of the population in the precinct due to the presence of vacant land for development. Besides these factors there are a lot of issues to be taken care as the precinct is under the process of development with 40% of the plots being vacant with the available increased FSI.
Conclusion
The development should be done in a concept of multifaceted system such that it does not affect the harmony amongst the various land uses which are existing.