Development of employment sub-centres in the city of Ahmedabad, India

This article describes how employment sub-centres can be identified applying geo-spatial modelling techniques in the context of metropolitan areas in India, and how the development of these employment centres can be linked to the levels of accessibility to labour, access to transport infrastructure as well as land use mix and land use diversity. For the city of Ahmedabad, employment sub-centres are identified for the year 2010, while the progression of employment in retail, commercial and industrial sectors in each of these centres is studied for the period from 1980 to 2010. Definite the signs of sprawl-type development and polarization reversal are observed, including the emergence of new employment sub-centres across the urban area, and the rapid growth of centres further away from the central business district. Retail and commercial sectors have grown exponentially, whereas industrial and manufacturing sector’s growth is stagnant. This development is mixed and heterogeneous, with the growth of the retail and the commercial sectors found to have a significant and positive relation with access to labour and transport infrastructure. These identified patterns of development provide important information to urban planners enabling them to make informed decision, for example, in locating future employment activities, identifying future transit-oriented development nodes, etc.