URBAN ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY OF AHMEDABAD CITY

Abstract

The environment as an aggregate of external condition influences the life of man and the interface between man and environment take place in a human habitation. It has been assumed that continuous growth is essential to economic prosperity irrespective of irreversible damages made to the environment. Out breaks of epidemics, disasters are the usual effects which are seen today. There are various dimensions of the environment including social, cultural, physical, natural and even economic which contributes to the quality of life. The environment has little to do with the political boundaries established by the individual communities or nations. The study is an attempt to assess environmental quality of an urban area. The scope of the study is limited to assessment of physical environmental only. Spatially it is limited to the administrative boundaries of the local authority. The environmental quality may be assessed by the health risk it imposed on the inhabitants or the assessment of stress in terms of availability, accessibility, quality and distribution of urban services. The assessment of stress has been attempted. The methodology used is to prepare indicators of the variables measuring environmental parameters. The indexes are prepared by dividing observed values with the standards and the index values for each spatial unit are worked out. The variables of each standard are not defined and the higher their value the better it is, in case of that, ward values are compared with the city mean to get the comparative ranking. • The indicators used are density of population, housing density, occupancy rate and housing condition as parameters of physical development. • Variables of active and passive recreational spaces like gardens and playgrounds as indicators of open spaces. • Variables of services like water supply, sewerage system, roads and streets, storm water drainage, street lamp post, and solid waste collection as parameters of physical infrastructure. • Air quality indices as the indicators of ambient environment. Various parts of urban areas in due course of its development and physical situation develop as ecological units and they may be identified in different stages of development. These have been identified having different environmental status also. The spatial units of analysis which is a ward have been prioritised for different environmental programmes. The western Ahmedabad which is economically better than the other parts of the city is having a better position of urban services also. The effect of poor environment is the outbreak of diseases. Though there are information constraints yet a correlation between stressed areas and the most affected area is found.