Indian metropolitan (tier I) cities have been undergoing rapid urbanization during the post-globalization era with the unprecedented market interventions, which have led to the rapid land cover changes affecting the ecology, climate, hydrology, and local environment. The unplanned urbanization has given way to the dispersed, haphazard growth at the city outskirts with the lack of basic amenities and infrastructure as the planners lack advance information of sprawl regions. This has necessitated understanding and visualization of urbanization patterns for planning towards sustainable cities. The analyses of urban dynamics during 1973-2017 using temporal remote sensing data reveal 1028% increase in urban area with the decline of 88% vegetation and 79% of water bodies. Consequences of the unplanned urbanization are the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, decline in vegetation cover, loss of groundwater table (from 28 to 300 m), contamination of water sources, increase in land surface temperature, increase in disease vectors, etc. An attempt is made to understand the implications of unplanned growth at the micro level by considering the prime growth poles such as Peenya Industrial Estate (PIE), Whitefield (WF), Bangalore South Region (BSR). The spatial analyses reveal the decline of vegetation and open spaces with intense urbanization of 86.35% (in BSR), 87.39% (PIE) and 81.61% (WF) in 2017. WF witnessed the drastic transformation from agrarian ecosystem to a concrete jungle during the past four decades. Spatial patterns of urbanization were assessed through the landscape metrics and rule-based modeling which confirms intense urbanization with single class dominance. Specifically, NP metrics depicts PIE region had sprawl growth till 2003 with numerous patches and is transformed by 2017 it has become to a single dense urban patch. This necessitates appropriate planning strategies to mitigate further erosion of environmental resources and ensure clean air, water, and environment to all residents.
Keywords: Bangalore; Landscape metrics; Micro level analysis; Rule-based modeling; Sustainability; Urbanization.