Quantification of the land use/land cover dynamics and the degree of urban growth goodness for sustainable urban land use planning in Addis Ababa and the surrounding Oromia special zone

Uncontrolled urban growth and haphazard land developments are one of the crucial problems in Addis Ababa and the surrounding Oromia special zone causing environmental degradation and rural-urban land base conflicts. This is mostly because of the rapidly increasing built-up area that conquered large tracts of natural green spaces and prime agricultural lands. The research compared the land use-land cover (LULC) change, demographic dynamic, the sprawling patterns and the degree of built-up growth goodness. Methodologically, the study applied a multi-step geospatial and statistical modeling techniques, and it also employed the Shannon entropy index and the degree of freedom to measure the sprawling pattern and the degree of goodness of urban growth. Accordingly, the dynamic LULC change index identified the built-up area as the most dynamic land cover type and the intensity index depicted that a large part of the area was on the high-speed urban expansion level. Moreover, this study approved that the effects of the sprawling pattern have strong momentum to push the region’s built-up dynamics than the population increase and it also confirmed that a prevalence of high built-up sprawling and bad urban growth conditions. Therefore, the study lay emphasis on an integrated urban-regional planning and management approach and quantifying the built-up intensity, sprawling and the degree of urban growth goodness as a tool to control the LULC dynamics and enhancement of a rational decision on sustainable urban growth planning and management. Keywords: land use-land cover, built-up dynamics, sprawling, degree of goodness of urban growth, Addis Abab