Impact of land use conversion on built environment of planned neighborhoods of Lahore

Farah Jamil

Impact of land use conversion on built environment of planned neighborhoods of Lahore

Date

2017

Authors

Farah Jamil

Publisher

University of Management and Technology

Abstract

Lahore, the city of gardens as the provincial capital of Punjab and the fourteenth most populous city of world have gone through major physical spatial expansion due to continuous population increase. The land use of the city is in continuous transformation due to population increase and is expanding in south and south east directions through planned settlements. Land being an important resource accommodates the expansion and various activities within the residential areas of the city. Wapda town cooperative housing society is a planned public society located in the southern part of Lahore. Presently the situation of the society was not the same 15 years back. Transformation of land use is one of the issues, to be addressed immediately. Increase in land use change in residential areas and formation of main streets as a commercial street greatly affects in terms of increased neighborhood density and overloading the existing infrastructural facilities. This has questioned that how these transformations took place and what the strong factors behind this are. To find the solution to such questions it was therefore essential to analyze the structure and pattern of the land use changes. Neighborhoods are important for their residents; it has significant implications on neighborhood satisfaction which is affected by various factors of the neighborhood built environment. The impacts are usually felt by the people residing in the society. Therefore a correlation exists between the neighborhood built environment and its resident's satisfaction. The proposed area of research is the identification of factors causing land use change and their impacts on neighborhood built environment. The study mainly focused on the information obtained through available literature and data collected through physical surveys that enabled to explore the transformation of designated land use pattern of Wapda town cooperative housing society. It helped in selecting the main roads of Wapda town where maximum number of conversion was seen and identifies the causes of its conversion. A comparative analysis of residential and commercial property users has been done in order to evaluate the overall satisfaction level on physical, social and economic grounds through yeh's index of satisfaction. The study of users revealed that overall satisfaction level among residential property users lies in negative range whereas for users of commercial property give it a positive value. This indicates that economically the commercialization has created positive impacts however in this prospect, commercialization is causing detrimental impacts on environmental and social factors of the built environment. The findings suggest that policy makers should enact such laws which can strengthen land use management and maintain quality of life for the residents. Thus reducing the negative and adverse effects of property conversion and causing dissatisfaction among residents. To create a livable environment for the resident's, integration of physical, social and economic considerations by proper land use pattern must be maintained. Furthermore government should introduce an investment framework that encourages the building of shopping centers as well as apartments catering both the residential and commercial users. By doing so, they can provide more customized built environments; increasing residents' life satisfaction.