Title:	Land Use Dynamics in a Developing Economy
Authors:	Shahab Fazal
Keywords:	Dynamics
Issue Date:	2013
Publisher:	Springer
Description:	Land represents an important resource for the economic life of a majority of people in the world. The way people handle and use land resource is decisive for their social and economic well-being as well as for the sustained quality of land resources. Land use however is not only a realm of those directly using it; it is exposed to a part of the wider reality of social and economic development and change. Land resources are used for a variety of purposes which interact and may compete with one another. Land use and its transformation is therefore a highly dynamic process. Land transformation accelerated and diversified with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the globalization of the world economy, and the expansion of population and technological capacity. As land cover, settlement represents the most profound alteration of the natural environment by people, through the imposition of structures, buildings, paved surfaces, and compacted bare soils on the ground surface (Richards 1990). Settlements also create demands that lead to other land-cover changes, such as the removal of vegetation and soil to extract sand, gravel, brick clays, and rock; the replacement of vegetation by planted cover in gardens, parks, sports grounds; the alienation of ground for landfill and waste treatment; wetlands and open space conversion for settlements; and the use of land for transportation routes. Urban expansion and quick transformation of land is a worldwide phenomena in relation to urban growth, not only in North America (Squires 2002), Western Europe (Couch et al. 2008), and Japan (Sorensen 1999), but also in cities of developing countries (Keiner et al. 2005). But the urbanization process among developing countries greatly varies from that of developed countries. The urban growth in recent times is not only more pronounced but also abrupt and volatile in developing world where as this process was relatively smooth and gradual among developed countries (Fazal 2006). Today, India remains by and large a rural agricultural country as the share of agricultural workers in the workforce is still 59 % and above 70 % people living in rural areas in 2011. Meanwhile, the share of population living in urban areas has also increased and is about 27.8 % in 2011. But these figures do not tell the whole story.
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/52510
ISBN:	978-94-007-5255-9
Appears in Collections:	Population Studies

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