Abstract:
This study was carried out in Rulindo District exactly in Shyorongi sector. The main objective of this study was to assess the impact of unplanned settlement growth in the peri-urban areas of Kigali. The study used interviews with local community, authorities and staff in charge of urban issues. The study also made use of RS methods to analyse three Landsat images of 2000, 2010 and 2020 classified via supervised classification methods using maximum likelihood to analyse LULC changes. Existing land use plans were used to examine the reliability of current land use with respect to the planned zoning rules. Data analysis was done using GIS software for spatial data analysis and Ms Word the processing of interview results. The findings revealed that the main drivers of the unplanned settlement growth in the study area are mainly the location in the peri-urban area and vicinity to Kigali; financial chance from wages gained from the city and growing number of inhabitants. The findings show that over the period of 2000, 2010 and 2020, the unplanned settlements have rapidly expanded resulting in various impacts in time and space. Thus, in the study area the non-built-up LULC had presented an excessive decrease of about 862.05 ha with an increase of built-up area. This has led to proliferation of critical negative impacts including inadequate basic infrastructure services, environmental degradation and unexpected land use. Beside negative impacts, the study looked on the positive impact of the settlement, where we found that there are positive impacts including the access to own houses, the settlement suiting the needs of urban poor, employment opportunities. the study advocated for the active measures including monitoring of the settlement variation, upgrading the informal settlements, strengthening implementation of existing policies and regulations related to human settlement, local communities and stakeholder’s reflexion in the preparation and execution of land use plans
