Indian historic cities serve as cultural anchors and are vital to heritage tourism, yet their unregulated urban expansion has become a major concern. Long-term monitoring of built-up area growth is crucial for informed and sustainable urban governance. However, the absence of satellite data before 1975 limits the ability to track historical urbanization trends. To bridge this temporal data gap and enhance the accuracy of future urban growth predictions, this study develops a semi-automated methodology that integrates georeferenced and vectorised historical maps with remote sensing data. Focusing on the historic cities of Varanasi and Hyderabad, the study reconstructs two centuries of built-up area growth. Varanasi exhibited an average annual built-up growth rate of approximately 3.35%. A discernible north-westward shift in the urban centroid was observed, with buffer analysis around the Kashi Vishwanath Temple indicating intensified urbanization within the 5–10 km and >20 km zones. Hyderabad showed an average annual built-up growth rate of about 3.04%. The city’s centroid exhibited a northward drift until 1995, followed by a south-eastward shift, aligning with the growth of the IT corridor and associated infrastructure in that region. Buffer analysis further revealed that urbanization in Hyderabad has been more prominent beyond the 20 km radius, underscoring peripheral expansion driven by economic clustering. This study demonstrates the efficacy of combining historical cartographic archives with satellite imagery for reconstructing long-term urban dynamics. The proposed methodology not only enhances the temporal depth of urban change analysis but also provides actionable insights for planners and policymakers to promote resilient, culturally sensitive urban development strategies.
Sridhar et al. (Sun,) studied this question.