Rapid growth and conversion of rural lands into urban places and urban growth management becomes indispensable, especially the need to control the amount, type, extent, rate, and quality of resultant places. In other words, the need to manage how much growth occurs, its character, where it occurs, how fast it happens, and with what impacts; are all-important. Therefore, the study sought to evaluate the effectiveness of planning tools in managing the peri-urban land use change process towards achieving spatial stability. Particularly, it investigated turnaround time for development applications, criteria for development approvals, site visits and inspection of developments, criteria for approval of building plans, application for development permission, and issuance of notice of approval/deferment/refusal. The research was guided by the Theory of Change (ToC) and was informed by a cross-sectional survey research design. Data was collected through questionnaire administration, focused group discussions and interviews. The research hypothesized that there is no significant association in the compliance levels between prescribed and applied physical planning standards. This was tested by use of Chi-square test which demonstrated that despite there being a clear manifest variance in the difference between prescribed standards and applied standards of development compliance, there was no significant association in the categories of low-density developments (chi-31.640, p-value 0.000) and the medium density residential development category (chi-20.347, p-value 0.000). However, in the high-density residential category (chi-4.903, p-value 0.297), the test results indicated a strong association hence, the null hypothesis was rejected. Further, the study found that urban development plans have not been effective instruments for control and guidance of the development of peri-urban places. This necessitates the rethinking of urban planning concepts that have shaped the understanding of the peri-urban development. This study argues that the land use change and the spatial restructuring of peri-urban places will be the most critical because there is no planning system or institutional frameworks to manage the transformational processes towards spatial stability.
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