Cities are a draw for expanding the nation's social, economic, and political context. It can build large-scale and small-scale businesses, academic facilities, government agencies, and other entities. As a result, more people migrate to urban areas from rural areas or move from one urban centre to another. Consequently, the population density is increasing in several areas of the cities. There would be a significant alteration and adjustment in the way the land is used as a result. Therefore, a thorough analysis and several assessments are needed for such a development to maintain the urban environment and prepare for potential future calamities. Accordingly, the study's primary goal is to determine the change in land use and detect land cover in Chennai. Using Land sat 4-5, and 8, 30 m resolution images, remote sensing data, satellite imagery, and image processing techniques were used to determine land cover changes between 1997 and 2017. The modifications were located using the ERDAS and Arc GIS software. Five categories of land cover—water body, vegetation, agricultural, barren terrain, and built-up area—were used in the categorization. The images' pre-processing and classification had undergone comprehensive analysis, and the accuracy assessment had been tested separately using the kappa coefficient. The change detection indicated that the shifting of barren land (54.91 sq. km), agriculture (9.10 sq. km), and vegetation (9.03 sq. km) had significantly changed the built-up area. The accuracy assessment showed that the overall accuracy is 96.88 % and 94.59 %, with a kappa coefficient of 0.95 and 0.87.