Urban development potential assessment is essential for guiding the spatial expansion of cities, optimizing land use, and ensuring sustainable urban growth. In the context of rapidly urbanizing regions, such as Nigeria, understanding development potential helps mitigate the challenges of urban sprawl, infrastructure strain, and environmental degradation, hence, this study is aimed at a GIS based approach for assessing urban development potential in federal capital territory Nigeria. The objectives of the study are to: identify and categorize the key factors influencing urban development in the Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria; assess the reliability of the identified factors using consistency index and sensitivity analysis; determine the potential areas for urban development in the Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria using analytical hierarchical process; and produce an urban development potential map defining the extent of urban development potential