<p>Cities especially in developing economies like India experience random, haphazard, and unplanned growth often population induced, resulting to urban sprawl having social, economic and environmental implications. Imphal, the largest urban agglomeration (IUA) of Manipur is no exception to this and hence the present study attempts to quantify the dynamics of urban expansion of this agglomeration and associated spatio-temporal land use changes as well as the nature of urban sprawling for the last 4 decades starting from 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021. Satellite imageries have been downloaded and landuse landcover maps have been prepared using the supervised maximum likelihood classification technique. The magnitude of the urban expansion has been ascertained using the Urban Expansion Intensity Index. The pattern of urban growth and sprawl has been analyzed with the Landscape Metrics and the Shannon’s Entropy technique. The result indicates that the built-up area increases by 55.44% whereas the agricultural land and the vegetation decreases by 28.69% and 42.10% respectively in the span of 30 years (1991–2021). Landscape Metrics shows the urban landscape fragmented into small patches in the initial years (1991–2001) of the study period have been aggregated into larger patches over the years showing the increasing compactness of the city. Shannon’s Entropy result reveals the random urban sprawling around the periphery of the city and the increasing infillings with time, resulting in the compactness of this agglomeration. The present study provides a better understanding of the scenario of urban expansion and the sprawling in the city, and is expected to give an impetus to the concerned academicians, stakeholders and urban planners to consider the ongoing pattern of urban growth in the IUA in the future urban development and planning process.</p>