Peri-urban areas are transitional zones on a city's outer boundaries or edges. These regions have immense growth potential and are developing at a rapid speed. Hence it is necessary to observe the land use land cover and constant changes to understand the dynamics of these transformations. The study area selected for this study is towards the Southern fringe of Chennai, Tamil Nādu, India. Multi-spectral satellite imagery from Landsat 5 and 8 is analysed for this study. The primary intent of the study is to assess the change in the three landcover classes, namely water, land, and vegetation, over a 30-year study period between 1991-2021. The peri-urban regions majorly are arable land. Hence NDVI is considered a suitable index to monitor the land cover changes in the area of interest. The spatiotemporal analysis indicates an increase of 19.43% in land /barren areas towards the Northern parts near the study area and along the transit and industrial corridors. No significant changes are observed in the areas of vegetation that could be attributed to efforts taken to conserve reserve forests and increase green zones in newer developments. A steep depletion of 46.86% of water bodies observed in the region also corresponds to water scarcity problems. Accuracy was assessed using ground-truthing methods, computing the confusion matrix and Kappa coefficient. NDVI is used efficiently in the land cover classification but does not indicate the difference between built-up areas and barren land. Change detection map prepared using ARCGIS, indicates the areas that have been converted to other landcover over a period of 30years. The study reveals an urgent need bring in policy decisions to conserve waterbodies in the initial stages of urban planning for sustainable developments in the fringe areas.