Urbanization and its Impact on Coastal Eco Tourism in West Bengal

Urban land use of growing city is often associated with vertical and horizontal change in which various functional characteristics of the city added. The changing urban features are characterized with increase of urban population and development activities that magnify centripetal forces in most developing countries. In developing countries urban area as well as their population is growing at a fast rate and the growth of cities is not observed in planning specify urban activity locations and spatial structure of urbans that impacts spatial flow of humans and commodity in urban surface and energy consumption for transportation between destinations which in turn affect land quality. Eco-tourism is a nature base travel to relatively undisturbed natural area with the specified object of studying admiring and enjoying the scenery and its wild plants and animals as well as any existing cultural aspect (both the past or the present) fond in these area. Long coastal tract of Purba Medinipur district, West Bengal, presents significant role of eco-tourism. Purba Medinipur with colonial legacy present an interesting course of transformation of traditional rural society leading to urbanization between 1901 to 2011, urban percentage geared from 12.2 % to 35.5 % while urban area increased from 1.03 % to 4.5 % to the districts total area. This clearly entails to speed and sale of urban land use change and urbanization. The present study deals with the reasons of the urban land use change and impact on eco-tourism in coastal area.