Spatial dynamics of per-urban expansion and livelihood impacts in the suburbs of Shaggar City in Ethiopia’s rapidly urbanizing corridor

In Sub-Saharan Africa, rapid uncoordinated horizontal urban sprawl frequently collides with the preservation of peri-urban agricultural systems, creating severe governance deficits, landscape fragmentation, and socioeconomic marginalization for indigenous communities. This study addresses this problem by quantifying the spatial dynamics of peri-urban expansion and evaluating its livelihood impacts in Burayu Town, a rapidly growing sub-city within the Shaggar City corridor adjacent to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Utilizing a mixed-methods research design, we integrated multi-temporal Landsat satellite imagery (year 2000–2023) with qualitative and quantitative primary data. The survey sample was drawn from a defined institutional population frame of 4832 systematically displaced farming households across three peripheral kebeles (Burayu Gafarsa, Malka Gafarsa, and Gafarsa Guje), yielding structured surveys ( N = 145), 12 key informant interviews, and 6 focus group discussions. Geospatial post-classification analysis reveals a massive transformation of the landscape: built-up areas expanded by 50.99 ha/year (a net growth rate of + 31.85%) between 2000 and 2023. Cropland suffered a net loss of − 59.312 ha/year (− 39.14%), acting as the primary spatial sacrifice for urban sprawl. This rapid expansion is driven by speculative land markets, weak institutional planning enforcement, and top-down infrastructure development. Socioeconomic data show that this spatial shift resulted in severe livelihood disruptions, with the majority (73.1%) of displaced households experiencing a total collapse of agrarian income and heightened tenure insecurity. In response, affected families rely on precarious non-formal survival strategies, petty trade, and informal social networks, which fail to fully mitigate their socio-ecological vulnerability. The findings demonstrate that uncoordinated expansion converts vital agricultural spaces into fragmented urban zones, reinforcing the urgent need for integrated spatial-social monitoring, participatory land governance, and formal customary tenure protections to ensure equitable and sustainable urbanization in rapidly transforming African corridors.