Assessment of Urban Redevelopment Practices in Hossanna City, Central Ethiopia: The Case of Sefere Selam Local Development Plan
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Date
2026-05-01
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Urban redevelopment is an intervention tool supposed to make cities better places economically, socially and environmental to live and to work for the dwellers, business men and tourists. However, in Ethiopian secondary cities it often does not work as planned. This study assesses the preparation and implementation of urban redevelopment in Hossanna City, using the Sefere Selam Local Development Plan (LDP) as a case study. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the research triangulates data from household respondent surveys, key informant interviews, municipal document reviews, and systematic field observations. The findings reveal that the planning team does not strictly applied the planning principles stated in the national NDP manuals in the issues of site selection criteria, area coverage and public participation. As a result only about one-third of planned interventions have been implemented after six year. The main reason is not lack of finance alone, but problems that rooted during plan preparation and implementation. The project area was made too large nearly ten times the national standard for inner-city redevelopment. The planning area covered three kebeles instead of one, crates coordination difficulties. The planning team composition had not incorporated urban designers, economists, or sociologists. The approval process skipped public consultation, independent review, and legal authorization. Implementation became selective and unfair: public open spaces were leased to developers, housing redevelopment reached only a small fraction of targets, and most displaced kebele renters were never consulted about development preference. Significantly, the analysis detects the primary obstacle of plan implementation are financial constraints, institutional void, lack of a legally authorized implementation agency and the least level of /tokenistic participation approach overturn technically sound plans. As a result of this, the study reveals that technically sound plan cannot substitute the institutional voids and procedural segregation. The study suggesting the establishment of a dedicated redevelopment implementation agency diversified financing systems, institutionalized stakeholders participation structure and strict compliance with national site-selection maximum limits. By tracing the causal pathway from planning overreach to implementation stagnation, this research provides actionable policy guidance for municipal authorities and expands the empirical literature on Ethiopian secondary city redevelopment
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Hossanna City, Institutional Absence, Implementation Failure, Planning Overreach, Participatory Planning, Secondary city, Urban Redevelopment