A spatio-temporal assessment and prediction of Ahmedabad’s urban growth between 1990–2030

Analyzing long term urban growth trends can provide valuable insights into a city’s future growth. This study employs LANDSAT satellite images from 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2019 to perform a spatiotemporal assessment and predict Ahmedabad’s urban growth. Land Use Land Change (LULC) maps developed using the Maximum Likelihood classifier produce four principal classes: Built-up, Vegetation, Water body, and “Others”. In between 1990–2019, the total built-up area expanded by 130%, 132 km(2) in 1990 to 305 km(2) in 2019. Rapid population growth is the chief contributor towards urban growth as the city added 3.9 km(2) of additional built-up area to accommodate every 100,000 new residents. Further, a Multi-Layer Perceptron — Markov Chain model (MLP-MC) predicts Ahmedabad’s urban expansion by 2030. Compared to 2019, the MLP-MC model predicts a 25% and 19% increase in Ahmed-abad’s total urban area and population by 2030. Unaltered, these trends shall generate many socio-economic and environmental problems. Thus, future urban development policies must balance further development and environmental damage.