Spatial temporal change of human settlements development pattern in Afromontane region: casestudy of Thabo Mofutsanyana municipal district

Abstract

The issue of settlement development change in mountainous regions has received little or no significant attention in global urban sustainable development, and this is one of the reasons why the United Nations included Sustainable Mountain Development in the Programme of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As cities expand daily because of urbanization, the surroundings of mountains are not left behind in the development and growth. However, this important feature is not fully integrated into the holistic development framework of the region. Moreover, there are many constraints to settlement growth due to liberty to own land and houses because of various policies and enhancement provided by the democratic government. However, the spatial development framework does the work of zoning in the urban areas; there is little or no control in the locations (rural areas), where development springs up every day, anywhere, and anyhow. The increase in demand for land for urban development has extended to the land in and around the mountains that result in different changes in other land use and land cover, degradation of ecosystems, and social changes within urban populations. In the same way, mountainous cities in Eastern Free State have experienced urbanization like most of the major cities in sub-Sahara Africa. These are evident in the increase in built-up over the years and the demand for land for building. The motivation for the study is the quest to monitor the trend of change in settlement development in the Afromontane region and to channel that towards a sustainable settlement development pattern. This study investigates spatial-temporal change in human settlement development pattern was conducted in Thabo Mofutsanyane municipality within the Drakensburg mountain of the Afromontane region. The objectives are to assess the land use pattern and development changes and to determine the spatio-temporal change of human settlement development patterns in the study areas using GIS, remote sensing and spatial metrics. Also, to identify and assess the factors responsible for the changes in human settlement development patterns as well as evaluating the current level of development based on the above objectives and modeling a sustainable human settlement development pattern study areas. To achieve the objectives, the study utilized GIS images downloaded from Glovis and classified using CART classifier, a cross-validation of 70% training and 30% test; the accuracy assessment was calculated for each settlement using a cross-tabulation matrix. The result showed the effectiveness of the method in monitoring land use pattern and development changes as well as importance for future planning. The result was further analyzed to describe the spatial-temporal pattern of settlement development using spatial metrics. In order to identify and assess the factors responsible for the developmental changes, a study on the perception of the community leaders, government agencies in charge of settlement development, developers, and farmers’ representative was conducted through the use of interview guides. Furthermore, the study found that there was a steady expansion in the built-up areas in the years under study, the highest increment for the three settlements was from 1989 to 1999, Harrismith experienced 136.5% (4km2 to 9.46km2), Ladybrand had 149.8% (2.73km2 to 6.82km2) while Vrede experienced 218.8% (0.53km2 to 1.69km2) increment. Though there is no sufficient population data to justify this, the available data showed a slight population increase from 2001 to 2011 and a record of migration into the settlements within these years range. The increment was also due to the democratic government’s effort in the provision of housing for the masses through the Reconstruction and development program, which aimed at building over one million houses in a year. Moreover, Harrismith was found to be the most fragmented settlement out of the three because of its undulating landform, which defined its development, Ladybrand and Vrede are more aggregated and physically connected than Harrismith. The GIS classified image correlated with the information collected from the interview confirming that the study area has experienced different land-use change, especially with urban expansion. The political factor, which is the change in government from minority to majority, various policies related to human settlement and access to housing, economic and demographic factors, and land fragmentation were the main factors that led to settlement development and in the municipality of Thabo Mofutsanyane. The effect of political factors, which is the transformation from minority government to majority rule, has a direct impact on the landscape of the municipality. With the expansion of the built-up area between five years before and five years after 1994, and the current unsustainable emerging trends of housing units at the peripheral location around cities, the indirect effect will be haphazard environment and exorbitant infrastructural cost in the long run. However, most of the changes do not pose any danger for now in most of the settlements except in few places where the allocation of land is done traditionally without any formal development control. The absence of integrated frameworks in the traditionally controlled areas is another challenge for settlement development; the study went ahead to propose a sustainable human development pattern.