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Cities in India are increasingly at risk from natural hazards and the effects of climate change. In Kolkata, urban development on the low-lying periphery has produced uneven geographies of risk, with well-protected suburban settlements surrounded by overcrowded slums with poor infrastructure and a lack of basic services. This article connects proxi...
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The ‘Stars’ are series of suburban settlements adjacent to the border with the occupied West-Bank which illustrate the increasing privatisation of the Israeli settlement mechanism. Unlike earlier examples, which were dictated by pioneer ideology or individualistic attempts to achieve better living standards, during the 1990s the state adopted a sup...
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... The average size for a single-family housing unit in America in 2020 was 2261 square feet (SRD, 2022). Furthermore, in the same year, the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer was 10,715 kilowatt hours (kWh), or about 893 kWh per month (Ritchie & Roser, 2020). In contrast, the average build size for Hong Kong in 2009 was 484 square feet (Wilson, 2014), and whilst house data is unavailable for poorer countries, per capita electricity consumption is more than 100-fold lower, for example, in 2014, the average person in the Democratic Republic of Congo consumed just over 100kWh (Ritchie & Roser, 2020). ...
... Furthermore, in the same year, the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer was 10,715 kilowatt hours (kWh), or about 893 kWh per month (Ritchie & Roser, 2020). In contrast, the average build size for Hong Kong in 2009 was 484 square feet (Wilson, 2014), and whilst house data is unavailable for poorer countries, per capita electricity consumption is more than 100-fold lower, for example, in 2014, the average person in the Democratic Republic of Congo consumed just over 100kWh (Ritchie & Roser, 2020). Hence, the enormous disparities in house size and energy use, creates differentials in capital and desire between peoples involved with these living arrangements and energy usages. ...
This handbook entry examines the issue of housing in the Anthropocene. The issue of housing in the Anthropocene involves many factors and aspects to express with respect to housing given the facts of climate change. To limit these factors and possible through-lines for this entry, housing in the Anthropocene will be analyzed according to three dimensions to make sense of the future of housing needs alongside climate change: 1) Housing and human population. The fundamental questions with respect to housing in the Anthropocene involve human population, and the concurrent creation of more housing given increases in the human population in the future; 2) Housing and spatial requirements. Following on from the extra requirements for human housing given increases in human population, the critical issue of spatial requirements for this housing will be addressed; 3) Housing and net zero. The third section of this entry interrogates the possibility of housing in the Anthropocene reaching net zero and thus not contributing further to climate change. For the purposes of this entry, a time ceiling of 2050 will constrain each section, and limit the possibility of this entry becoming embroiled in overly speculative science fiction
... The risks of flooding in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, have increased as a result of the legacy of poor planning and an uneven distribution of geographic elements. [31] Flood occurrences in Nadia district in West Bengal ...
The flood hazard risks and vulnerability in the urban areas alongside major rivers of India have been gradually increasing due to extreme climatic events. The present study is intended to assess flood hazard vulnerability and potential risk areas and aims to ascertain the management strategies in Nabadwip Municipality, a statutory urban area of West Bengal. The multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) of selected criteria and geospatial techniques have been employed to determine the urban flood vulnerability in the study area. The study has been conducted using secondary datasets including relevant remotely sensed data and participant observation. The potential flood-affected zones have been determined using the normalized difference flood index (NDFI) and flood vulnerability index (FVI). The analysis of the standardized precipitation index (SPI) of 20 years of monthly precipitation shows the variability of seasonal rainfall distribution in the study area. Furthermore, the spatial distribution of the composite Ibrahim index of socio-economic development accents that the urban development of the study area was uneven. The municipal wards situated in the central and northeastern portions of Nabadwip Municipality were extremely vulnerable, whereas the western and southwestern wards were less vulnerable. It is also revealed from the strengths–weaknesses–opportunities–challenges (SWOC) of the principal management strategies of the flood situation analysis that the unplanned sewerage system is one of the most effective weaknesses in the area. All-embracing and integrative flood management strategies need to be implemented in the study area considering the intra-regional vulnerability and development for the resilient and sustainable development of the study area.
... Large-scale urban development projects usually benefit from convinced possible 'flexibilities' and lawful 'gray spaces' in formal structure to execute them. Several private and state actors join forces in such projects, often expanding and reinforcing the capitalist position of the public sector (Rumbach, 2017). In contrast to the disarray of existing urban spaces, bypass urbanism creates restricted and unique city spaces that allow more contented or high-status lifestyles. ...
Large-scale private real estate projects in the past few decades in vast areas of increasingly varied scales have been created that were once sparsely inhabited agricultural land and wetlands in the remote locations of these urban areas. This paper examines the reasons for India's peripheralization of real estate megaprojects. Such projects are typically constructed on agricultural land, notably paddy fields and wetlands. Developers' site selections are mostly influenced by the low cost of land and future development potential. In contrast to the disarray of existing urban spaces, "bypass urbanism" creates restricted and unique city spaces that allow more contented or high-status lifestyles. They avoid large parts of the city area as part of their daily lives, reinforcing socioeconomic isolation, peripheralization, and uneven urban development. With the help of two case studies, this paper explores how peripheralization has created a restricted and exclusive space that facilitates middle-class life while bypassing and neglecting existing urban areas. This massive bypass urbanism constitutes a new quality of urban growth with far-reaching and uncountable repercussions, resulting in the creation of islands and the reshuffling of the entire metropolitan region.
... The urban development paradigm has shifted from the core to the fringe since the 1970s. The city authority, in trying to create its own global identity, is bypassing the colonial imprints and instead focusing on urban redevelopment through emulation of global protocols as well as the expansion of the city peripheries (Mitra, 2016;Rumbach, 2017;Mishra, 2019). The present chapter aims to discuss the phases of urban displacement in Kolkata (erstwhile Calcutta) in di erent historical conjunctures and the contestations that ensued among di erent actors. ...
... In Kolkata, urban development on the low-lying periphery has produced uneven geographies of risk, coupled with suburban or rurban settlements surrounded by overcrowded slums with poor infrastructure and lack of basic services (Rumbach, 2017). In the last 300 years, as the city expanded and as the Kolkata Urban Agglomeration took shape, the anthropogenic changes due to urbanisation have changed the original topography of Kolkata. ...
In analyzing the Earth’s surface pattern, geochronology, natural resources, natural hazards and landscape growth Anthropogeomorphological mapping has played an important role. It includes dividing the field into metaphysical space entities that use criteria such as morphology (form), genetics (process), shape and function, chronology, correlations between the biophysical environment (land cover, soils, ecology), and spatial and topological connections between surface characteristics (landforms). This chapter explores the importance of geospatial technologies in Anthropogeomorphology and its use of different ways for the study of geomorphology and human involvement. Instead of seeking to cover wider areas of GIS-based scientific research, this chapter focuses on geomorphological problems and knowledge criteria dictating application creation and refinement. It also illustrates the relevance of the shortcomings of perception with regard to depiction, size, measurement and remote sensing.Keywords
Anthropogeomorphology
LandformRemote sensingGIS
... In Kolkata, urban development on the low-lying periphery has produced uneven geographies of risk, coupled with suburban or rurban settlements surrounded by overcrowded slums with poor infrastructure and lack of basic services (Rumbach, 2017). In the last 300 years, as the city expanded and as the Kolkata Urban Agglomeration took shape, the anthropogenic changes due to urbanisation have changed the original topography of Kolkata. ...
Land deterioration affects cropland and land suitability throughout the globe and is one of the forces that lead to the harming of land richness, thus resulting in meager productivity, caused by both natural as well as anthropogenic factors. Deterioration of crop areas by land abrasion is a global encounter prompting deprivation of supplement-intense surface soil, enhanced effluents from more impervious lands, thus less availability of water flora, and also leads to other calamities such as landslides. That one may examine the aftermath of this very issue, the demand of the hour is to comprehend the reasons, effects, and seriousness of this issue. Researchers, and environmentalists all over the world, are creating strategies for evaluation. Ground appraisals, professional assessments, object notations, end user’s judgments, aptness acclimation, remote sensing, and modeling methods are some of the ways to approach this issue. In this study, RUSLE was used to generate a soil erosion map of the study area. Five years of mean yearlong information is used for the computation of the annual rainfall factor. The soil survey was done by the NBSS & LUP, and parameters such as sand, silt, clay, and organic matter content were taken into consideration to generate the K factor. Likewise, to generate the value of LS factor, a DEM was used. To generate the cover factor values, NDVI was used in a geographic information system (GIS) environment. All these factors were generated in the GIS environment to obtain the results. The erosion maps achieved were categorized into slight (0–5 t/h/year), moderate (5–10 t/h/year), high (10–20 t/h/year), very high (20–40 t/h/year), severe (40–80 t/h/year), and very severe (>80 t/h/year). The map thus generated will serve as a tool for planners for proper conservation practices in the area.
... In Kolkata, urban development on the low-lying periphery has produced uneven geographies of risk, coupled with suburban or rurban settlements surrounded by overcrowded slums with poor infrastructure and lack of basic services (Rumbach, 2017). In the last 300 years, as the city expanded and as the Kolkata Urban Agglomeration took shape, the anthropogenic changes due to urbanisation have changed the original topography of Kolkata. ...
Spatial assimilation and the dynamicity of urban land use are significant issues in the study of modern towns and cities. Many studies have been conducted to monitor urban land use and sprawl of metropolitan cities or other big cities in India and other countries. But the same kinds of studies conducted for small and medium towns/cities are lesser in number. In this chapter, supervised image classification technique with maximum likelihood classifier algorithm has been applied to estimate the land use/land cover (LULC) change over two time periods using ERDAS imagine (v.14). For assessing the supervised classification technique’s accuracy, confusion or error matrix and kappa coefficient (K) have been applied. A conversion map has been generated from the classified image pairs to measure the quantitative characteristic of changes. Shannon entropy method has been used to find out the urban sprawls. The result of this analysis indicates that the built-up increased significantly from 32.86 km2 in 1990 to 61.16 km2 in 2019 in Siliguri (UA), and for Raiganj (UA), it increased from 4.76 km2 in 1991 to 22.41 km2 in 2019, resulting in a loss in prime agricultural land, fallow land, and vegetation. Shannon entropy has provided excellent assistance for quantifying the sprawling mechanism in both areas to obtain the result. The findings of this chapter may help planners and policymakers guiding urban land management in the context of rapid conversion, as seen in the recent past.KeywordsLand use/coverChange detectionUrban sprawlRemote sensing and GIS
... In Kolkata, urban development on the low-lying periphery has produced uneven geographies of risk, coupled with suburban or rurban settlements surrounded by overcrowded slums with poor infrastructure and lack of basic services (Rumbach, 2017). In the last 300 years, as the city expanded and as the Kolkata Urban Agglomeration took shape, the anthropogenic changes due to urbanisation have changed the original topography of Kolkata. ...
Abstract
Urbanisation in the developing Global South, during the contemporary Anthropocene period, has been witnessing tremendous population pressure and consequent transformations in the natural landscape. Most often the interests of the urban lifestyles and economic development perspectives supersede the environmental and geomorphic concerns. Unplanned constructions and consequent alterations of the land cover, drainage channels and ground slope greatly impact the geo-environmental stability, leading to various types of hazards. The present study is focused on the impact of anthropogenic transformations of hydro-geomorphic landscape in the city of Kolkata. The present work primarily focuses on identification of the nature and magnitude of the cityscape modifications with reference to urban renewal and resettlement patterns. Besides, it incorporates land use and land cover (LULC) dynamics, changes of urban geo-forms and drainage systems, and problems of urban flooding and its associated issues. Geospatial techniques have been applied to extract and analyse the database that includes satellite images, field surveys using levelling instruments, demographic data and administering restructured questionnaire and focused group interviews of the affected groups of population to identify. It has been found that the sample areas have been increasingly facing adverse environmental consequences along with congestion and decay of drainage channels and urban flooding at times of above-normal rainfall conditions, all due to unplanned and recurrent anthropogenic alterations of the urban surfaces. It is suggested that proper measures should be taken in designing and maintaining the local hydro-geomorphology to prevent such persistent problems and thereby mitigating the hardships of the inhabitants.
Keywords
Urban geo-environment Anthropogenic interventions Urban hydro-geomorphic hazards Surface slope modifications Urban flooding
... In Kolkata, urban development on the low-lying periphery has produced uneven geographies of risk, coupled with suburban or rurban settlements surrounded by overcrowded slums with poor infrastructure and lack of basic services (Rumbach, 2017). In the last 300 years, as the city expanded and as the Kolkata Urban Agglomeration took shape, the anthropogenic changes due to urbanisation have changed the original topography of Kolkata. ...
... Within this growing agenda, many urban and critical researchers are engaging with the topic of disaster governance. Efforts include particular 'urban' approaches to risk recreation (Marks, 2015(Marks, , 2019Rumbach, 2017) and other theoretical elaborations. For example, Grove (2014) develops a critical perspective on the biopolitics of disaster management in Jamaica, describing it as a Deleuzean 'machine' (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) that relies on the innate power of local populations. ...
... Knowledge of root causes is crucial to achieving a more critical understanding of distant and structural factors (A. Fraser et al., 2016Fraser et al., , 2020Oliver-Smith et al., 2016Rumbach, 2017;Wisner et al., 2004). The Pressure and Release (PAR) framework, developed by Wisner et al. (2004), explains disasters as the result of the intersection of a hazard and a set of advancing vulnerability-producing processes: root causes influence dynamic pressures and generate certain unsafe conditions. ...
