The primary drivers of agricultural land depletion in Taiz be diagnosed quantitatively in this study, proposing for the first time a replicable conflict-sensitive urban management model. The overarching objective is to bridge the critical gap between sustainable urban expansion and the preservation of agro-ecological systems in fragile, data-scarce contexts. A combination of unplanned sprawl, crisis, and ineffective governance, Taiz City's rapid urbanization between 2000 and 2024 resulted in a 35% loss of agricultural land. This study proposes that governance reduces the primary causes of conflict escalation and the severity of sprawl. This study combines GIS spatial analysis (Landsat 8/9 and support vector machine classification), regression modeling, and global case comparisons (Medellín and Mumbai) to assess land-use trends. The findings indicate that governance diminishes the effects (β = −0.50, p < 0.01), sprawl (β = 0.85, p < 0.01), and conflict (β = 0.002, p < 0.05) explain 85% of the variance in losses. By 2024, 3.2 million residents' food security was at risk because of the urbanization of 60% of peri-urban fertile lands. Vertical expansion, tenure regularization and GIS planning will reclaim 20% of land by 2030.
Adeb Ali Ebrahim (Fri,) studied this question.