Evaluation of Spatio-Temporal Settlement Pattern in an Airport Region

Envisioning the airport's expanding relevance as a hub for passenger movement and its immediate ancillaries and as a focal point for inducing growth that embraces enormous conurbations and associated services, this paper seeks to identify factors likely to impact the regions surrounding the airport, especially from a viewpoint of planning and development. The rationale for focusing on these areas is to determine the impact of change in landside connectivity in an airport region on the hierarchy and interaction of settlements. In order to explore the objective, the application of GIS, as well as statistical analysis, has been undertaken for the selected case study of Bagdogra Airport, West Bengal, India in the North-East region and with geographically challenging terrain. Methodologically, this paper tries to identify changes in the various types of socio-economic and urbanizing factors to find out the impact of change in connectivity on settlement patterns in the region. It is evident from the results that, while visualizing the spatial structure of the factors affected in the airport's region, the airport can be considered a pivot that induces urbanization and increases the number of amenities in its vicinity. As a result, it is apparent that large airports are transitioning from airport cities to new focus locations in the regions for the development of regional infrastructure that catalyze the phenomenon of urbanization.