Spatiotemporal variation analysis of urban land expansion in the establishment of new communities in Upper Egypt: A case study of New Asyut city

The Egyptian government set out in the 1970s to establish new cities in the desert to absorb urban sprawl and to prevent further depletion of agricultural lands. Despite such efforts, this policy has not met with much success. In the present study, LANDSAT satellite imagery and binary logistic regression analysis were employed to investigate the nature of urban sprawl in one of the most important cities in Egypt, Asyut city, as well as the area connecting it to New Asyut city by quantifying the interaction between the driving forces of land use/cover change. Various socioeconomic factors associated with land control policy were examined. The results indicated that whereas directing urban development towards the new city created a semblance of balance initially, the rate of land development in the study area outstripped the rate of population growth, especially in the new city. While establishment of the new city boosted early urban development, further development in the regions outside the Nile valley was not sustained due to a lack of supportive governmental policies. Consequently, urban residents moved back inside the valley to re-settle on agricultural lands adjacent to the old urban cores. This study is the first to quantify the driving forces of land use in this region. It offers useful data to guide planned and purposeful expansion of urban land by government policy-makers in their effort to curb urban sprawl and prevent further encroachment on agricultural land in Egypt.