Changing form in urban villages case study of Jaipur metropolitan area

Abstract

Increase in urban influence in a metropolitan area results in changes at macro and micro level. In the process of urban expansion the traditional village settlements often get merged into an urban environment. By notification these traditional revenue villagesand#8223; get classified as urbanand#8223; and have been referred as urban villages.and#8223; Higher demographic status, increase in morphological similarities with the urban centre, increase in land value necessitating intensive landuse, reduction in count and size of farm lands, an almost daily contact with the city and its people compared to their rural counterparts are common observations as has been reported in past also. These urban villages thus experience a full course of emergence, evolution and socio-economic changes resulting in change in the character and in some cases in governance and management. Urban villages undergo aforesaid changes in addition to other visible changes like expansion of boundaries and physical changes in built environment, activity pattern, density, etc,. This results in the emergence of a new urban form in each of these urban settlements and thereby transformation of the entire metropolitan area having the urban villages laid in a mosaic from the periphery to core. Distinct urban forms emerge from administrative, socioeconomic, cultural and spatial interactions and in absence of any planned intervention they are primarily determined by natural and unplanned processes, best represented as an outcome of organic growthand#8223;. Study of demographic, physical, socio-economic, environmental and ecological changes have been suggested for understanding urban influence and corresponding change in urban form in urban villages. The rural-urban transformation has broadly been classified as rural, pre-tansitional, in-transition, posttransition and urban and occurs within or at variable distances from the urban centre, major linkages, sectoral work places, etc. The change in urban structure has been explained using distance criteria, both at the macro and at the