This thesis is about soc io-economic and cul tural crfects of urban dcve lopllleni proJ ccl -the be lt hi ghway rnconstructi on- In Add is Ab~ ba. The project is a mega construction project that displaced households and rnbusiness centers. It had put in place a fasc inating hi ghway designed to miti gat e trai'fic congesti on in the rncity core .It was also meant to enhance urban land usc at the peri -urban areas. rnI se lected the topic aft er going thro ugh relevant literalU re bUlh to avo id dlipl c~ llln ~I d al the same rntime to get insights from prev iolls works. Accord ingly, I kid i'llI'mli LllL'd tllJ'l'l' spcci lic ubjcc tl ves I'or the rnthesis. I in tended to analyze the project cl'l'ccts on the dispLt ced households espec iJll y the poor: to exa ll1ll1e rnthe adaptive strategies devised loca ll y to cope up with unde sired projec t elTecls: and to assess the rnimpli cati ons of the project in li ght or the overall urban deve lopment ac ti viti es In Add is Ababa. The rnstudy is a quali ta ti ve research in which lusecl mul tiple da ta co ll ec tion methods. I did not rely on any single rndata coll ection technique. Instead, [ tri ed to tri angul ate one with the other. rnThe study found out that although the road construction had successfull y intercepted signi li cant tranic, it rnhad bro ught considerab le soc io-economi c and cultural disru pt ions. The undesired elTec ts we re attributed rnlarge ly to poor project design that had little room 1'0 1' int sc lin lr y project planning ll1 d loca l rnpeopl e's parti cipation .Even then , the projec t