Cultural heritage and urban morphology: land use transformation in ‘Kumbh Mela’ of Prayagraj, India

Abstract A Hindu pilgrimage site where millions of people gather to seek solutions to problems related to everyday life, the “Kumbh Mela” is recognised as one of India’s intangible cultural heritages. The site of the observance rotates between four cities, Haridwar, Ujjain, Nashik and Prayagraj. The infrastructure and services in the city that is hosting such a gathering undergo numerous changes as a result of the sizeable gathering. The goal of the study is to monitor the changes in Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) in the city of Prayagraj before and after the “Kumbh Mela” and to evaluate the effect on infrastructure changes in the citry. Analyzing the changes that such pilgrimages and events bring about in cities are fascinating. In 2019, the city of Prayagraj hosted the “Kumbh”, hence, Pre-Kumbh (2016), Kumbh (2019), and Post-Kumbh (2022) phases were taken under consideration for LULC change assessment. Supervised classification was conducted using Maximum Likelihood Classifier to prepare LULC maps. It was observed that urbanisation has significantly increased at the expense of vegetation, fallow land, and agricultural land. The success of the local agroforestry policy and plantation drive is demonstrated by the interesting increase in vegetation that has been observed. The construction of a civil airport, the widening of existing roads, the installation of new railroad tracks, and the adornment of roundabouts on existing roads are the major infrastructure changes. The findings offer fresh insights of increasing urban infrastructure from a cultural perspective. The findings will aid in better planning and policy development for the resilient and sustainable infrastructure, as well as in the development of a long-term strategy for the temporary habitation in the “Kumbh” area of such cities.