Land Use Beyond Control: How fragmented governance created sprawl in the Delhi Metropolitan Area

Resource-efficient growth, which is characterized as integrated land use and trans-portation development, is cost effective and stimulates growth while reducing environmental impact. Integrating transportation, land use and coordination among numerous existing local government bodies is critical for implementing such a model. Although the role of governance is crucial for attaining inter-sector and inter-municipal solutions, it remains challenging for governments to address such issues because policies are traditionally specialized by sectors and municipal power is limited by juris-diction. Despite attempts to manage growth in South Asia, the prevalent trend is characterized as dramatic because of the excessive outward expansion at the cost of productive agricultural land and growth associated with a lack of infrastructure. Taking Delhi and its neighboring tehsils (subsection of a district) as an example, the research presented in this paper uses remote sensing imagery (RS) and GIS-based vector analysis to model the relationship between municipal jurisdictions, public transport and urban growth. The investigations identify increased growth outside municipal jurisdictions and a lack of regional integration through pub-lic transport. The findings suggest a weak empowerment of governing bodies, which conse-quently directs the growth into transition zones, and fragmented governance as the reasons for the failure to achieve the integrated growth of land use and transport, thus creating a sprawling land-use pattern.