- English
Planning for a sustainable future involves understanding the past and present problems
associated with urban centers. Rapid urbanization has caused significant adverse impacts on the
environment and natural resources. In cities, one such impact is the unsettling urban growth, resulting
in the urban heat island (UHI) effect, which causes considerable positive feedback in the climate
system. It can be assessed by investigating the relationships between urban Land Use/Land Cover
(LULC) changes and changes in land surface temperature. This study links the urban transformations
in Bangalore, India, between 2001 and 2021, with the city’s changing average land surface
temperatures. LULC classification was performed on Landsat satellite images for the years 2001,
2011, and 2021, using the support vector machine (SVM) classification algorithm. LULC change
analysis revealed an increase in the built-up area coinciding with a decreasing trend of water bodies,
vegetation, and the area under the others (wasteland/open land/barren land) category. The results
show that built-up increased from 462.49 km2 to 867.73 km2, vegetation decreased from 799.4 km2 to
485.72 km2, and waterbody declined from 34.28 km2 to 24.69 km2 in 20 years. The impact of urbanization
was evident in Bangalore’s land temperature changes between 2001 and 2021, showing the
average temperature increased by 0.34 °C per year between the highest UHI events, contrary to 0.14
°C per year in non-urbanized areas. It is hoped that the results of this study can help the urban
planners of Bangalore city identify critical areas where improvement in urban dwelling could be
planned sustainably according to the global smart cities concept, an offshoot concept of the Sustainable
Development Goal (SDG)-11.
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