Spatial-temporal trajectories in the peri-urban region of Chennai, India: a spatial methodology

Abstract

Many regions across the globe experience profound urbanization processes, often going hand-in-hand with built-up area expansions in urban peripheries. This is particularly happening in Africa and Africa, largely driven by rural-urban migration, changing livelihoods, and state-led urban development. While there is considerable knowledge about the social, economic and environmental impacts of urban development projects and different urban development processes across geographic regions, there is less work on systematically tracing and comparing spatial-temporal trajectories of built-up area development within urban peripheries. We address this shortcoming through a spatial methodology, mainly relying on remote sensing analysis and qualitative fieldwork based research, to characterise peri-urban built-up developments in space and time. We have selected the case of Chennai, India, where we observed spatially interesting peri-urban dynamics over the past decades. We describe spatial-temporal trajectories and relate these to projects, policies, and infrastructure interventions, e.g. the emergence of large IT parks or infrastructure projects, which helps us formulate assumptions about what drove these trajectories. We identified different kinds of trajectories, varying in location, speed, size and form. These findings can inform follow-up qualitative investigations to further interpret the spatial-temporal trajectories that we identified through the spatial methodology.