Characterization and prediction of urban sprawl patterns in Kibaha Town Council towards 2050

Urban sprawl in rapidly growing cities increasingly encroaches upon peri-urban areas, transforming these transitional zones into spaces of informality, inequality, and institutional neglect. The Kibaha Town Council in Tanzania, a rapidly changing peri-urban zone, demonstrates this trend. This study employed multitemporal Landsat imagery (1998–2023) and the Cellular Automata-Markov (CA-Markov) model to analyze historical urban expansion and forecast future sprawl by 2050. Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) maps were created using supervised classification, accuracy assessment, and change detection. Spatial metrics, including Shannon Entropy and the Urban Expansion Intensity Index (UEII), were used to assess sprawl dynamics. Built-up areas increased by 4.55 percentage points from 9.99% to 14.54% of the entire study area between 1998 and 2023, indicating a moderate but steady rate of urban expansion. Owing to government conservation regulations and afforestation efforts, vegetation cover increased from 35.97% to 66.71%, although bare land decreased dramatically from 53.81% to 18.42%.Although afforestation initiatives have increased vegetation cover, projections indicate that it may decline by 2050 because of increasing urbanization pressures. A UEII value of 0.29 implies slow but sustained urban expansion. The northern and western peripheries are expected to grow significantly by 2050. The spatial organization changed from dispersed to compact, indicating increased urban consolidation. Kibaha's urbanization is mild, yet unmanaged, posing risks to informal settlements and infrastructure strain. Green landscapes and agricultural zones continue to be at risk for unplanned sprawl in the absence of proactive interventions, such as enforcing zoning laws, creating green buffer zones, and encouraging compact mixed-use development.