Enlarged Street Map of Addis Ababa

The built up area of Addis Ababa covers 222 square kilometers in the shadows of the Entotto mountains. Like many urban regions in America, beyond its suburbs, Addis Ababa is surrounded by smaller cities on the rail line and major roads leading into the city. which rely on it as a market for products of industry. Nearby towns include Akaki on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, which is a center for light industries including textiles and food processing, and Nazareth, a sugar processing center which is southeast of the capital. Debre Zeyt, the headquarters of the Ethiopian airforce and a weekend resort for many citizens of Addis Ababa is also to the southeast. A vacation destination for city people is Lake Bishofu, a crater lake swimming hole to the east of Addis Ababa (Area Handbook 183).

Because of its desirable central location and primate city status, ³All roads² do indeed, ³lead to Addis, which offers a blending of modern and traditional living patterns,² according to the Area Handbook for Ethiopia (30).

The city itself is divided by elevation. In the north lies the old central sector, Arada, home of St. George's Church, the public square (³Piazza²), several small markets, and Addis Ababa University. This area is centrally located on a hill 450 meters above the surrounding city (Area Handbook 30). This upper market area is a patchwork of narrow, winding streets with occasional open spaces used for commerce. Many of the shops, which sell everything from local produce, to international merchandise, are operated by Arab and other Moslem traders.

Connected to the Arada by Churchill Avenue, the main north-south corridor in the city, is Lower Addis Ababa. This commercial core is more characteristic of small American and European central business districts, with its mid-rise hotels and government buildings. This southern part of the city houses restaurants, shops, and museums as well as the soccer stadium and railroad station (Area Handbook 30). Wide avenues are part of a more organized grid which has north-south, east-west, and diagonal axis. Diagonals converge at seven circular plazas scattered all about Addis Ababa which are the focal points of the city's transportation network.

The streets are busiest at dusk, during Addis Ababa¹s equivalent of Œrush hour¹, when cattle and goats are driven from fields on the urban fringe, to their owners¹ homes in the city (Area Handbook 30).

East of the Arada is Addis Ketema ("new town"), which was constructed by the Italians as the new home for the Ethiopian population of the young metropolis (Brunn & Williams 276). Today, the Merkato d¹Indigino (native¹s market) is located west of a small grid of streets erected by the Italians, is the largest market center in Ethiopia.

Most of the foreign embassies, including those of the United States, Kenya, Britain, France, Italy, Russia, and Belgium, are located northeast of the Arada.

The wealthiest residents of Addis Ababa make their homes in a "high class residential complex," which is situated far to the southeast of the Arada, next to the Bole International Airport (Brunn and Williams 277). Another upper-class neighborhood is similarly located adjacent to the Lideta airport in the southwestern suburbs.

While cities in developing nations in Asia and South America tend to have a concentration of wealth in mixed use neighborhoods near the central business district, Addis Ababa appears to better fit the American/European model for distribution of wealth. Like most US. cities, poverty is most intense in the neighborhoods surrounding the CBD, while government officials, elite businessmen and wealthy foreigners live in spacious compounds, far away from the noise and congestion of the market center.

The Arada is surrounded by low-income slums and shantytowns to the north, northwest and west at Addis Ketema with particularly high density low income residential areas immediately southeast of the business district (Brunn & Williams 277).

Addis Ababa is certainly no Los Angeles, Miami or Houston, as its problems of urban poverty are much more severe, but the geography of wealth and power in the city is strikingly similar to the pattern found in these and other western cities.

Read on about the Founding and Development of Addis Ababa

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