Abstract :
All over the world, cities and towns are expanding. The process of urbanization expresses itself through
a distinct set of land use and type of human behavior. It brings about phenomenal socio-economic
transformation in the surrounding rural areas. The pressure of continuously growing population in
towns / cities results in over-crowding and unplanned spatial growth and finally become a burden to
limited civic cycle amenities which forces the middle class as well as builders to move to outlying
suburbs, a phenomenon called, urban sprawl. Thus, any area, which is under the jurisdiction of a
municipality corporation, cantonment, or any notified town, which exceeds its administrative boundary
and grows outward without any check, is considered to be a sprawl. Hence, sprawl is the spreading out
of a city and its suburbs over more and more rural land at the periphery of an urban area, essentially
involving thereby the conversion of rural open space into a developed built-up landscape over time and
space. All these are associated with the urban growth of Barasat Municiapal Town, the district head
quarter of North 24 Parganas, West Bengal. Analysis has been done using multi-dated IRS Images in
GIS and RS platforms. Sprawling has been primarily taking place along the Highways in different
phases during the post-independence period conforming ‘leap-frog’development
Keyword :
Urban Growth Urbanisation Urban Sprawl Entropy Geospatial Technology