Commercial Structure Analysis Using GIS

Commercial structure has been one of the central themes in urban studies. The analysis of commercial activities and commercial structure has accompanied with the development of modern urban and economic geography. Distribution of changing pattern of commercial activities in the CBD area were not properly identified & not analyzed spatially & temporally for the future planning of the city. As an effective tool to combine geographic data and socio economic data, GIS is one of the essential information sources and analysis tools for urban research. In this study it was experimented to integrate GIS technology to analyze the spatial and temporal variation of commercial structure by developing a plot level database for each retail outlets, which help to find out the variation & spatial distribution pattern of commercial activities. With this understanding of spatial and non spatial analysis of the City Business Area, a comprehensive development plan could be developed for future improvement. Therefore it is necessary to have a properly developed plot level data base for urban renewal requirement in the city planning process.

Autorentext

Guneththi Rasoja De Silva, BA (Geography Special) and PGDip (Geoinformatics) in IHRA, University of Colombo, GIS Assistant, Urban Development Authority ,Sri Lanka.Plnr.P G Pushpa Gamage, MSc in Geo-information Management (ITC) the Netherlands. Bsc(EMV),MBA,(University of Sri Jayawardenepura),Director (IS & GIS),Urban Development Authority