Abstract

When people affected by poverty are unable to lead a decent life, there is no doubt that there will be a decay of the city. And when there are inadequate and unfit housing, the condition of the environment often result to slums and ghettos, there will be the disaster of homelessness, unplanned and sprawl nature of city growth. The magic year had the consolation slogan of “housing for all by the year 2000” but this has since changed to the hard fact of “ what Nigerians failed to realize is that housing is a thing that every family would need to provide for itself.” The era of subsidy is gone and this reality has raised a lot of pertinent questions especially on where lies the hope for the poor in a mega city? 

The phenomenal growth of our towns and cities has given rise to conurbation and metropolitan areas, with various planning problems such as traffic congestion, slum, shanty towns, waste management, housing, pollution, poverty and several others. There is no doubt that the impact of rapid population growth on housing development in a developing economy is usually a consequence of the push of the rural areas and the pull of the town. There is always an upsurge and conglomeration of people in city centres with the resultant effects on housing growth arising from acute unemployment. This growth and physical expansion of cities have been accompanied by unplanned urban sprawl, environmental pollution, deterioration, deficiencies in modern basic facilities, and general urban decay. As increased poverty and urbanization exert more pressures on urban facilities, most Nigerian cities tend to have lost their original dignity, social cohesion and administrative efficiency.

This paper therefore revealed the consequences of the problems of urbanization in Lagos, it focuses on the spatial growth and the rapid rate of development in Metropolitan Lagos in order to show the significance and the role of public-private-partnership in the Mega City. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.