Spatial Analysis of Intra-Urban Land Use Dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia)

Long-term urban land use data in Maputo, Mozambique: A comprehensive dataset covering five decades (1964-2001)

Rapid urban change and expansion pose significant challenges in the Global South, and Maputo, Mozambique, is no exception to this phenomenon. Among the multifaceted dimensions of urban transformations, land use stands out as a key factor in urban planning. The implications on environmental aspects, availability of land for public services, and overall quality of life make understanding these issues crucial. This paper aims to address the afore mentioned challenges through a two-fold approach. Firstly, it provides open and free access to urban land use maps of Maputo city spanning five decades in a Geographic Information System (GIS) format, enabling the comprehensive study of the city's transformation over time. Secondly, it presents a detailed and comparable classification and nomenclature of urban land use, ensuring consistency and comparability in research and planning endeavors. The land use maps were created using image interpretation techniques, incorporating remote sensing data such as aerial photographs and high-resolution satellite images, as well as fieldwork and ancillary data. By combining these diverse sources, a comprehensive and accurate representation of Maputo's urban land use shapes was achieved. This study contributes to the understanding of urban dynamics and their impacts on various aspects of city life in Maputo. The open access data and detailed classification presented here serve as valuable resources for researchers, planners, and policymakers, facilitating informed decision-making, sustainable development, and effective urban management in Maputo and beyond.

Urban Land Monetization-Driven Land Use Orientations: An Insight from Land Lease Prices in Addis Ababa

Urban land leasing is a land monetization strategy that was introduced in 1991 by the contemporary regime. Since then, urban center slum demolitions and their replacement by high-end commercial buildings and urban peripheral low-cost residential condominium expansions have been common occurrences in Addis Ababa. Land rentiers quote extreme land prices at the city center and relatively low prices towards the periphery. Therefore, it has been hypothesized that urban land supply and land prices are determinant factors for urban land use orientations, which have pushed low-end groups towards the periphery. Therefore, based on a lens of land rent theory, 1524 land lease prices and 1038 randomly selected land parcels using Google Earth were used to evaluate locational trends in land prices and land use orientations, respectively. This study revealed that there are significant variabilities between government benchmark land prices and actual quoted land prices. Because of the high rent gaps at the city center, significant land price quotations were recorded, and this overlaps with the urban center slum demolitions and slum resident resettlements at low-cost residential condominiums in the urban periphery. In the first 5 km from the urban economic center, land prices show a declining trend towards the periphery. The central business district is dominated by slums partially under demolition and high-end commercial buildings, while the periphery is dominated by high-rise low-cost residential condominiums. Therefore, the distance from the city center was found to be an explanatory factor of urban land prices. The contributions of other urban utilities to land prices, such as access to transportation routes, could be a future research area.