Effects of Rapid Urban Expansion on the Peri-Urban Livelihood of Surrounding Farm Land in the case of Hawassa city, Ethiopia

Abstract The study focus on the socio economic impact of urban expansion on the surrounding displaced farmers in the Hawassa city, to compare and contrast the pre and post displacement livelihood pattern of the farm household and identifying the coping mechanism that the displaced community develops as a new means of livelihood. To achieve these objectives, the data was collected from primary and secondary data source and used a mixed type of research method. The sample was selected from 1321 total displaced households within the year of 2015–2019. From this population 307 respondents were selected by using Simple random sampling technique. Descriptive and econometric model are also used to analyze the data, probit regression models were used to investigate the impact of urban expansion on the livelihood of surrounding displaced farmers. The findings indicate that the expansion of urban areas to surrounding rural farm areas have impacts on the displaced farm land size, farmers’ social and economic levels, due to the change of the living style and means of livelihood from agriculture to urban life style. From the observed ten variables compensation have significant correlation at 0.01% affected the livelihood of expropriated family and farm land size, occupation, family income and social relation have significant correlations at 0.05% level. The remaining variables sex, age, education level, family sizes do not have significant correlations after land expropriation.