Urban Sprawl Pattern and Its Implications for Urban Management (Case Study: Zaria Urban Area, Nigeria)

Urban sprawl, or the unplanned and uncontrolled spreading out of built-up areas in Zaria urban area causes problems of congestion, poor urban basic infrastructure delivery and poor urban planning. This paper analyzed the pattern and implications of urban sprawl using GIS and Remote sensing as an improved approach to analyze and explain sprawling beyond the traditional spatial or cartographic mapping and monitoring method which lacks the effectiveness to analyze and explain the details of spatiotemporal dimensions of urban sprawl. Map overlay analysis was used to calculate the rate and magnitude of the growth pattern for the four epochs of 1976, 1990, 2000 and 2014 if it could be regarded as sprawl. Results revealed that ribbon and leap-frog pattern of sprawl had fully developed North-South at approximately 25km stretch (Kano-Kaduna road) and 16km East-West on the regional arterial roads (Sokoto road and Jos road). Findings also revealed that the sprawl patterns were as a result of rapid urban population growth, increase demand for land, poor urban planning and social segregation with their respective implications. The causes of having such widespread urban sprawl needs to be studied in order to control the City’s growth.