Statement of the Problem
Urbanization has been considered as a problem in Ethiopia recently and the city governments in the country
have always struggledto solve the problemstraditionally. With rapidly increasing population in the urban
areas, urbanization has emerged as one of the most serious challenges to the planners.Rapid urbanization in
Ethiopia was mainly caused in the last two decades, due to adoption of mixed system of economy by the
country which gave rise to the development of private sector.
One of the serious challenges of rapid urbanization is informal settlement.As (AshenafiGetachew,
2015)informal settlements are established due to various reasons and common throughout the cities of
World countries. First, high population growth and large influx of people from rural to urban areas.Second,
the capacity limitation of the national and municipal governments to provide planned urban houses to the
majority of urban people. Third, the high cost of even housing for the urban poor. Finally, the
marginalization of urban land requests of the poor through unaffordable land lease policies.
That is why rapid rise in urban population, in Ethiopia, is leading to many problems like increasing slums,
decrease in standard of living in urbanareas, also causing environmental damage, forcing people to live in
unsafe conditions which also includesillegal buildings. Water lines, roads and electricity are lacking which
is causing fall of living standards. It is also adding to theproblem of all types of pollution. These problems
are also experiencing in hosanna town.If this continues, the establishment of squatter settlements has
become major problems in the town. Likewise in Hossana town, squatter houses commonly known as
“moon shine houses” since people squat on the land during the dark hours of the night (AshenafiGetachew,
2015).
As mentioned in Ethiopian Proclamation no 574/2007, under article 25(1), “no development activity may be
carried out in an urban centre without a prior development authorization”.
According to article 24 of same proclamation “development” means: the carrying out of building,
engineering works, mining or other operations on or below ground, or the making of any substantial change
in the life of any structures or neighborhoods.
Land use planning is a science that determines the type of land use through studying the environmental
character of the land as well as its socio-economic structure. The urban planning authorities and agencies in
every parts of the country including Hossana town should adopt new technologies like remote sensing and GIS. These have capability to provide necessary physical input and intelligence for preparation of base
maps, for planning proposals and act as monitoring tool during implementation phase(s). GIS and remote
sensing are powerful tools for mapping and monitoring the ecological changes in the urban area and in the
peripheral land-use planning, will help to reduce unplanned urban sprawl like Hossana town.
Therefore, this study is aims to developplanning maps to improve the environmental and socio-economic
resources and to minimize the expansion of informal settlement and squatting, of Hossana Town using
Geographical Information System (GIS) and remote sensing.