Land Use Change as a Tool: a Framework to Link Transportation and the Environment in New Delhi, India

Cities in developing countries like India are facing some of the same concerns that North American cities are: congestion and urban growth. However, the concern in cities like New Delhi, India is that this growth is far more rapid as both urbanization and motorization are ongoing processes that have not yet peaked. Furthermore air quality in major Indian cities is now becoming a major concern with TSP (Total Suspended Particulates) levels at dangerously high levels. In this paper, we examine this land use change and its relationship with transportation and air quality in a spatial context to pinpoint locations for concern. Like many urban processes the spatial nature of these problems is self-evident. Air quality affects the various strata in the population differently depending on where they live and people live in different parts of the city depending on their socio-economic status. We estimate cellular automaton and discrete choice models of land use change. The former is used to look at various cities in India including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore. The latter is used for New Delhi alone. The results suggest that land use in the New Delhi metropolitan area is rapidly intensifying and that planners and policy-makers need to address industrial, commercial and infrastructure location in order to plan for a more sustainable city. We also examine these results in the context of a framework that can be used to link land use, transportation and air quality models for cities like New Delhi. Sumeeta Srinivasan 3