Spatial Assessment of Urban Growth and Air Quality Across Three Major Pakistani Cities Using Multi-Criteria GIS
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Rapid urbanization in Pakistan has led to urban densification that increase the environment to deterioration and the gap in the living standard between different areas to get wider. Lahore, Islamabad, and Rawalpindi, the three major metropolitan centers of the country, show very different patterns of urban growth ranging from very compact to planned low, density development. This paper presents a multi, criteria GIS, based spatial assessment to analyze these cities concerning land use change, urban density, vegetation loss, and ambient air quality. The research employs satellite images of Sentinel and Landsat, supervised classification, NDVI, and AQI data to track urban expansion and its environmental impact. Lahore represents a typical example, urban growth there is without any control. The city is continually expanding outward, with air quality hotspots remaining where AQI is more than 200. Thus, the people of Lahore breathe highly polluted air every day. However, Rawalpindi’s urbanization pattern is polar opposite to that of Lahore. It is less continuous and more scattered, densification is happening very fast and, in most cases, it is unplanned, with air pollution being concentrated around those areas where commercial activities take place. Meanwhile, Islamabad is maintaining lower building density and stable vegetation cover. The quality of its air is still fairly good; however, pollution is gradually increasing. The study pinpoints a very obvious pattern: the disappearance of vegetation goes hand in hand with rapid urban sprawl, and air quality gets worse. The conclusions here are calling for the radical change of the system. Planning the cities should not be a mere task of guesswork whereby planners would need a variety of data from the field to make the right decision. It is time they utilized geospatial data, invested in green infrastructure, and enforced zoning laws that consider air quality. Taking such measures is absolutely necessary if the big cities of Pakistan are to expand in a way that is not detrimental to human health and nature.
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