Land assessment framework for peri-urban agriculture

In order to gain higher productivity and profitability, the competition between demand and supply of land for different activities plays crucial role in land use morphology that challenges urban and peri-urban land use planners and managers. The transformation of conventional agricultural areas to modern cash crops and urban areas is a current trend in peri-urban Hanoi. The land assessment framework for sustainable peri-urban agriculture was a result of the combined techniques of Remote Sensing (RS), Geographic Information System (GIS), and Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) integrated with local knowledge. The whole framework identifies the urban sprawl dynamics and directions over the last decade, the land use patterns, and the linkages between peri-urban and urban areas, and it prepares a spatial decision scenario for the peri-urban agriculture at different levels of suitability. This empirical framework provides a cost effective, rapid land evaluation framework which can be easily propagated to other areas and may help policy makers, urban and regional planners, and researchers working in developing countries.