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The patterns of urban sprawl over a 20-year period presented in the study indicate unplanned development in the urban agglomerations of Ranchi, Jamshedpur and Dhanbad. The visual interpretation of Landsat (1986, 1991, 1996 and 2001) and IRS-P6 (2005) was used to map land use/land cover and analyse urban sprawl. The saturation of urban areas within municipal limits, along with pressure from the growing population, resulted in the densification of the core urban areas within Dhanbad and Jamshedpur. Comparatively, Ranchi exhibited a very high rate of built-up growth with a reducing population density, indicating a low density of built-up development. The development of built-up land at the expense of agricultural land in Ranchi Urban Agglomeration indicates poor land-transformation practices. An area of 103.6 km² (165.66% growth) was transformed to built-up land in these cities during 1986–2005. Any future built-up development of these agglomerations should involve the use of the government city development plan.
