Emerging Dynamics Shaping Urban Growth in Hawassa City, Ethiopia: Challenges and Opportunities

The urban growth trends of cities are significantly shaped by demographic change and economic development that adversely influence housing demand and supply, socio-economic resilience, and spatial changes. The objective of this article is to assess the link between socioeconomic and spatial developments in Hawassa city urbanization features. Primary and secondary data sources were used to evaluate the socio-economic and spatial change of Hawassa City. A stratified random sampling technique is used to collect data through Kothari sample size calculation. Data analysis was executed through SPSS, Excel, and QGIS to analyze socio-economic and spatial data. The finding reveals that the spatial change of Hawassa City is predominantly influenced by socio-economic change (demographic change, scale of economies, i.e.). The socio-economic factors revenue, transport modality choice, and tourism flow in the city significantly attract inhabitants to the city that have direct implication on the spatial change. Spontaneous land use change in developed and developing sites is triggered by the availability and proximity of service and infrastructure, housing demand and supply mismatch, and land price escalation. The finding also reveals that housing supply has a direct impact on the growth and expansion of informality as the formal housing supply declines. The growth tendency of informal housing units increases as the land supply decreases and has a positive relationship with land price.