Article Preview
Top1. Introduction
Worldwide urban areas have been characterized by sprawl, however, developed countries succeed to overcome this problem through better management practices and policy options (OCED, 2018; Jiang, 2016; Habibia & Asadi, 2011). It is believed that cities are inclusive units; they have to accommodate people choosing these places to live in. Therefore, it is inevitable for cities to grow with the passage of time as per its population increase. However, cities never grow in a planned manner (i.e., vertically or at appropriate direction) but rather sprawl on prime agricultural land in Pakistan. Sprawl is dissimilar to urban growth as sprawl is a form of urban expansion that is unplanned and unsustainable (Sinha, 2017) brings miseries and environmental degradation (Gordon & Richardson, 2000). Yin and Sun, 2007 described that urban sprawl has been the cause of many environmental problems in cities of United States before 1960, until they adopt Growth Management Program for cities. Galster et al, (2001) labelled poor planning and weak governance procedures for sprawl of cities across the US. However, Fulton et al, (2001) declared that population increase and sub-urbanization intensified land consumption relatively in cities of various countries. Most often government policies, institutional strength and adherence to development plan, work to discourage sprawl. Lopez and Hynes, (2003) described that migration and natural increase influence population growth and it concurrently caused change in land consumption earlier in US cities.
The streaming of immigrants and amalgamation of contiguous towns/villages into cities is a continuous phenomenon of contemporary urbanization in developing countries (Kugelman, 2013; 2014). This process has caused a consistent increase in urban sprawl and loss of agriculture land. Angel et al., 2011 estimated that in the year 2000 global urban land cover was approximately 0.6 million km2, while it is projected that it will cross 1.25 million km2 by 2030. Considering the continuous rise in unmanaged urbanization and proliferation of cities, it is expected that by the year 2050 urban land cover will cross the figure of 2 million km2 (Angel et al., 2011).
Various United Nations (UN) reports indicated that in 21-century the countries whose majority were rural would become predominantly urbanized (Kugelman, 2014). Pakistan is projected to cross this limit in 2025 to be called more urban and according to current projections, this will have risen to 70 percent by 2050 (World Bank, 2006). This phenomenon would further intensify sub- urbanization, agglomeration and the formation of hyper cities. No doubt urbanization brings prosperity and development, if it is properly planned. In this context managed urbanization is an essential prerequisite for development, as no country in the World has developed without encouraging planned urbanization (Nadeem Ul Haque, 2014). There is a direct correlation between urbanization and the GDP of a country (Sardar, 2012; Nadeem Ul Haque, 2014). Hussain and Tahir, 2014, verified that if a country succeeds to better manage its urban areas, then it will always enjoy lower cost of service delivery per capita, to keep providing better living conditions and better opportunities for personal happiness and economic accomplishments. However, uncontrolled urbanization is inversely proportional to the standard of living as witnessed in the cities of developing countries. It has been the cause of failure for various efforts of the government agencies to improve its urbanities.