Spatially Contextualizing Rural Land Transformation in Peri-Urban Area: A case of Jalandhar City, Punjab (India)

The advent of market liberalization in 1990 brought various forms of transformation, principally land transformation, to Indian cities and their respective peri-urban areas. The Jalandhar city and surrounding rural area from an agrarian state (Punjab) of India provide exemplified setting in this respect. A period of 30 years (1991-2021) has been selected to assess land transformation's magnitude, intensity, and direction. The applicability of different spatial data and methodologies helped analyze the facets of land transformation in quantitative and qualitative terms. The results highlight a massive rural land transformation due to the development of various urban corridors and institutional & commercial set-ups in the city fringe by converting and usurping prime agricultural land and increasing land fragmentation. The built-up class has seen a growth of more than 200 per cent in these decades at the cost of 22 per cent of cropland and other studied classes.