Inner City Urban Renewal: Assessing the Sustainability and Implications for Urban Landscape Change of Addis Ababa

Cities in developing countries are experiencing rapid transformation, one of which is caused by top-down inner city slum renewal. Usually the process happens without real participation of residents and focuses only on physical aspects resulting in a range of sustainability challenges. This study aimed at understanding citizens’ concerns and identifying assessment indicators for sustainable urban renewal in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Two purposively selected inner city slum neighborhoods before (Golla Sefer) and after renewal (relocated households due to Lideta Condominium) were examined from bottom-up side. Using multidisciplinary experts and literature review, twenty-six urban sustainability indicators were identified. The indicators were later used to assess the renewal in Lideta Condominium using Likert-Scale. Results showed that households’ concerns focused on livelihood, affordability, social network, security and proximity issues as these factors directly affect their daily lives. Expert’s assessment revealed that the renewal has brought improvement in land value while important economic indicators like affordability, job creation showed poor performance of varying percentage. Social indicators such as social network and safety showed poor assessment result while access to transport showed improvement. Some environmental indicators such as open space quantity, road and walkway and mixity showed improvements while governance has poor assessment result. Therefore, future renewal should improve public participation, revise the focus on home ownership, minimize relocation and enhance urban design. The study underlines important indicators from households’ perspective and other relevant indicators, which are important to sustainably guide future renewal in Ethiopia and other Sub-Saharan African cities with similar context.