INTRODUCTION TO URBAN FRINGE

Urban fringe areas are the result of urbanisation. Urbanisation essentially means that an increasing number of people now live in urban areas. This increase in urban population is accomodated in the suburbs. Thus, fringe areas have traditionally been looked upon as grounds for urban sprawl. These urban fringe areas are typically characterised by presence of vacant low cost land, low density development, conversion of agricultural lands to piecemeal development and overlaps of multiple governing authorities.

Drivers of development

Cities are engines of economic growth. Economic growth and development of a city are directly connected to the level of urbanisation in that city. With the advent of rapid urbanisation, Indian cities are experiencing outwards spatial growth. This phenomenon is typically haphazard, scattered and low dense. This urbanisation has led to unorganised growth in our Indian cities. The increasing population growth is accomodated in the fringe areas due to availability of low cost and vacant land. Since land in city centre is scarce and highly priced, developers also prefer constructing in the fringe areas. In the absense of a plan, this growth will continue to expand in an unorganised manner.

Characteristics

Fringe areas are typicaly characterised by presence of large amounts of vacant land. There is piecemeal conversion of agricultural land to haphazard and scaterred developments. Second key characteristic of fringe areas is largely privatised infrastructure. These include private acccess streets and water supply systems like bore wells. This is an issue because it raises concerns of environmental sustainability. Another pertinent characteristic of fringe areas is overlap of multiple governing bodies unlike any other city centre area. This leads to lack of co-ordination and implementation of plans in these areas. In the absence of a plan, fringe areas are typically characteristed by ribbon development.

Managing growth in fringe areas through TP schemes in Ahmedabad

When we look at an urban fringe area of Pune, we can observe that all development is clustered around one single road with linear agricultural plots being converted to new developments. Ahmedabad, however, has been relatively successful in managing its fringe area owing to the TP scheme mechanism. TP scheme is a land pooling and readjustment framework which allows for reserving land for roads and public infrastructure.

Fringe areas of Ahmedabad

While we understand that Ahmedabad manages its fringe area through a TP scheme mechanism, we also compare different fringe areas in Ahmedabad. To understand the growth dynamics of Ahmedabad, we have compared three different fringe areas of Ahemdabad: Chandkheda, Thaltej and Vastral. The spatial growth in Thalej is very high as compared to the population growth. This indicates that there are more high income, low density bungalow typologies in Thaltej. However, when we look at Chandkheda, the spatial and population growth are comparable which indicate that it is a growing ward with medium income residential estates coming up.