<![CDATA[The city of Erbil, Iraq, has expanded physically far faster than its population since 2003. This sprawl has accompanied an abrupt shift from traditional horizontal typologies — courtyard houses (mal-i hewshidar) and low-rise villas -toward high-rise apartments. A Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis of multi-temporal Land-Use/Land-Cover classifications (2004, 2014, 2024) quantifies the magnitude and rate of urban expansion through Shannon’s entropy: the urban footprint grew from 31.2 km² (23.4%) in 2004 to 88.7 km² (67.3%) in 2024, a 184.6% increase, while landscape entropy declined from 0.855 to 0.766. A household-level Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis of apartment residents formerly living in horizontal dwellings tests a five-construct model: Urban Sprawl Intensity (USI), High-Rise Adoption (HRA), Lifestyle Shift (LS), Energy Consumption (EC), and Environmental Degradation Awareness (EDA). Grounded in social-practice theory, the model indicates that perceived sprawl is strongly associated with high-rise adoption, which predicts lifestyle change, the strongest predictor of household energy use, while higher energy use is associated with greater environmental-degradation awareness. Framed within urban economics, the findings link macro-scale spatial growth to the household energy burden and the broader economic cost of sprawl, informing planning that reconciles metropolitan expansion with the realities of vertical living.]]>
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