Assessment of Urban Morphology through Local Climate Zone Classification and Detection of the Changing Building States of Siliguri Municipal Corporation and Its Surrounding Area, West Bengal

Abstract

Progressive population concentration to the urban centres has fuelled urban expansion in both horizontal as well as vertical direction, consequences in the urban landscape change. This growth resulted in posing many complexities towards sustainable urban development which can be counted by observing the changing proportions of natural landscapes and built up areas. Local climate zones (LCZs), a systematic classification of natural lands and built up lands, are identified in Siliguri Municipal Corporation (SMC) and its surrounding region to explore the spatio temporal complexity of urban growth in recent years. Rapid urbanization and population growth of SMC have led to change the building states from low rise to mid and high rise which added an important feature to the urban landscape dynamics of the area. The work intends to provide the vision of spatial urban morphology of the area through investigation of its changing land use and changing urban built space using the LCZ classification. The study shows that the WUDAPT method can accurately generate LCZs, especially the built type LCZs. The results of the proposed LCZ classification scheme are tested using error matrix for the year 2001 and 2021 having coefficient values of 0.79 and 0.81 respectively. The study explores the changing pattern of building states of SMC using LCZ products, which is essential for proper urban planning implementations.