Abstract:
Urbanization is one of the most impactful human activities across the world today affecting the
quality of urban life and its sustainable development. Urbanization in Africa is occurring at an
unprecedented rate and it threatens the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Urban sprawl has resulted in unsustainable urban development patterns from social,
environmental, and economic perspectives. This study attempted to analyze the urban sprawl
conditions for the last two decades and identify suitable sites for further urban development
based on GIS and Remote Sensing with multi-criteria evaluation technique. Satellite images of
Landsat 2000, 2010 and 2020 years, digital elevation model and infrastructure related data were
the major inputs for the study. GIS and RS integrating with Multi-Criteria Evaluation methods
were employed to reach the final output. Finding from the study clearly reveals that the town has
dramatically grown in all directions between the years 2000 and 2020. Built-up area increased a
lot in the last 30 years by consuming a considerable amount of other land-use/land cover types.
The major land use/land cover converted in to built-up areas is vegetation cover and farm lands.
The current furthest expansion of built up area of the town is towards west and east; the main
reason are plain topography and institutional factors like the Adventist hospital, Gimbi hospital
in the west and Wollega University-Gimbi campus in the East. Finding from suitability analysis
shows that from the total area of Gimbi town, more than 40 percent of the land falls under
moderately suitable 847.1ha (42.1%) and about 612ha (30.4%) is categorized under suitable site
for further urban development of the town. Modern technology of remote sensing and GIS which
helps us to analyze the data spatially, offering possibilities of generating various options through
modeling, thereby optimizes the whole planning process. It is in this context, the suitability
analysis attempted in this study must be viewed as a basic “Prioritization of land for urban
development.”
