The rapid urbanization and urban expansion in the developing world require a scientificrnunderstanding of complex urban growth patterns and processes. This knowledge is highly crucial tornsustainable land management and urban development planning. Progress in modern RemoternSensing and GIS techniques have opened up great opportunities, and significant success has alreadyrnbeen achieved in monitoring and managing fast urban growth.rnThis study focuses on mapping urban expansion and site suitability analysis for housing in Adamarncity. It analyzes the cause and its direction of expansion. The basic data used are topographic maprn(1:50,000), Aerial photographs of the city of (1965 and 1972), IKONOS image of the city (2004)rnand GIS data layers like Road, railway, River, Population, Land use, slope and Soil. It has beenrnfound that the built up area expansion of the city between 1965 and 1972 was 120 hectare whichrnwas 48% expansion and the built up area expansion of the city between 1972 and 2004 was 704rnhectare which was 290.3% expansion.rnThe road length of 1965 and 1972 was calculated out as 41.1 km and 72 km respectively .Hence thernroad was increased by 30.9 km (54.8%) between 1965 and 1972. Moreover, the road length of 2004rnwas measured as 160.3km. The road network expansion of Adama city from 1972-2004 wasrnincreased by 88.3km. This attempt has also been made to propose new sites for housing expansionrnbased on local and other countries criteriaâ€™s using seven parameters, Land use, population density,rnroad, railway, river, and slope. Using ArcGIS 9.1 of spatial analysis weighted overlay analysis havernbeen carried out by giving weights for each parameter using pair wise method and produce newrnsites for housing . Once suitability for housing expansion has been completed sites were evaluatedrnwith respect to the availability of utilities like electric, telecommunication and water supplyrnutilities, to support the proposed sites to be more comfortable and safe in terms of these basicrninfrastructures.rnThe study strongly supports the usefulness of advanced technologies like Remote Sensing and GISrnfor Urban expansion study and selection of best sites suitable for housing expansion based onrncertain criteria.rnKey Words: Urban Expansion, Remote sensing, Geographical Information System, Multi criteriarnanalysis (MCA) and Housing Site Selection