Planning Strategies for development of urban fringe of Surat city

An important development in urban settlement during the past few decades has been the rapid expansion of population and built-up area into the unincorporated suburb and in areas surrounding our large towns and cities. This recent finger like trend of development at the town margins has been made possible by the mechanised transportation and the extension of the public utility services such as electricity, water and sewage, etc. beyond the city's limit. Rural urban fringe is the most dynamic area lying between the city and rural area. The dynamic nature of the fringe can be detected by observing the changes in the city and vice versa. The changes at rural urban fringe depend up on the function and size of the city. The shape of the fringe belt varies from city to city, based on the physical, cultural, and economic personality of the city. Its shape is always changing in communication facilities. It is a process which helps to change the rural countryside into urban units. As the urban centre expand, the fringe belt does not remain static, it goes dynamically converted into a rural urban fringe and then merge with the parent urban center. Rural urban fringe signifies both urban and rural characteristics. The nature of fringe, as it neither purely resembles with the town characters nor with rural characters and the same time corresponds to both. The better way to identify the dynamic nature of fringe area is in terms of social, cultural, demographic and land transformation at different time periods. Urban encroachment is one of main problem prevailing in the environment of rural urban fringe. The urban impact has not only changed the socio-economic and demographic profile of the rural urban fringe but also the land use pattern of the area. The emergence of the fringe zone; with its own complex problems of adjustment between rural and urban ways of life have assumed importance and have drawn the attention of planners and social scientists for many years. Yet the study of the urban fringe has been a neglected topic in area of urban research. Even in the developed countries a few studies have been undertaken in this regard though this developmental phase of urban morphology was experienced there in the very beginning of the 20th century. Urban fringe studies have not received much attention among Indians either from geographers or from scholars in any of the other disciplines, which is a part of metropolitan planning approach. Hence, we have one of the major gaps in geographical research in this area of urban studies.