The Impact of Peri-Urbanisation on Housing Development: Environmental Quality

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A B S T R A C T This paper assesses the impact of peri-urbanisation on housing, environmental quality and residents’ socio-demography in Ibeju-Lekkiperi-urban in Lagos, Nigeria. Primary data was collected through administration of 370 questionnaires to household heads in purposively selected sixteen settlements in the study area while secondary data was sourced from spatial images, land use maps and satellite images of the study area. Quantitative data was analysed using descriptive statistics while qualitative data was analysed using time series and satellite image analysis. The result shows a spatial expansion due mainly to increased housing development, a multi-dimensional environmental and socio-cultural challenges that impacts negatively on the quality of living and a literate, high income group dominance in the selected peri-urban settlements in Ibeju-Lekki. The study recommends a creation of a database to capture the pattern of housing development, residents’ socio-economic demography and infrastructure needs for intervention in policy design for a sustainable development.

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The Impact of Peri-Urbanisation on Housing Development: Environmental Quality and Residents' Productivity in Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos *Dr.ADEDIREFUNMILAYO MOKUNFAYO 1, Dr.ADEGBILEMICHAEL BABATUNDE 2 1, 2 Department of Architecture, University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos State, Nigeria E mail: funmidire@gmail.com, E mail: mboadegbile@yahoo.com A B S T R A C T This paper assesses the impact of peri-urbanisation on housing, environmental quality and residents’ socio-demography in Ibeju-Lekkiperi-urban in Lagos, Nigeria. Primary data was collected through administration of 370 questionnaires to household heads in purposively selected sixteen settlements in the study area while secondary data was sourced from spatial images, land use maps and satellite images of the study area. Quantitative data was analysed using descriptive statistics while qualitative data was analysed using time series and satellite image analysis. The result shows a spatial expansion due mainly to increased housing development, a multi-dimensional environmental and socio-cultural challenges that impacts negatively on the quality of living and a literate, high income group dominance in the selected peri-urban settlements in Ibeju-Lekki. The study recommends a creation of a database to capture the pattern of housing development, residents’ socio-economic demography and infrastructure needs for intervention in policy design for a sustainable development. CONTEMPORARY URBAN AFFAIRS (2018) 2(2), 60-70. https://doi.org/10.25034/ijcua.2018.3671 www.ijcua.com Copyright © 2017 Contemporary Urban Affairs. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Housing development in Lagos State peri-urban settlements is mostly characterised by a high level of informal development, poor quality housing and confronted with a multi-dimensional environmental and socio-cultural challenges. Prompted either by forced relocation or voluntary relocation from the central urban area due to housing affordability in the peri-urban, the migrants constituting mainly the low income group and middle income group, and guided by limited economic resources, see the peri-urban, a transition zone between the rural and urban as the ideal place for personal housing development or rental housing (Allen, 2010). Among many challenges experienced by the migrants are conflict-ridden tenure, neo-customary land rights and arbitrary increase in land prices due to land speculation activities (Pradoto, 2012). Housing deficits in the city centre are a prominent negative effect of urbanisation in the third world (McGranaham and Satterthwaite, 2014), thus greatly influencing housing development in the peri-urban settlements of Lagos. Most housing under the self-help housing development and mostly owner-occupied developments creates a distortion to the master plan because of lack of effective monitoring and limited economic capacity of the low-income group. Disparity in the socio-economic attributes of the residents aided by institutional policy creates a socio-cultural and residential segregation in most peri-urban settlements (Fitra and Pradoto, 2014). Also, housing development in Lagos peri-urban exhibits various characteristics that are not in conformity with existing building regulation in the state. Policy response to the pattern of growth does not correspond to the pace of rapid housing development in Lagos peri-urban settlements. Although there exists good housing development led by government initiatives and private developers’ initiatives, self-help housing in Lagos peri-urban housing developments is generally known to be poor in term of quality (Lawanson et al., 2012). Borne out of terms the varying socio-economic composition of the residents and poor institutional responses, most self-help housing developments in Lagos peri-urban are total deviation from acceptable housing quality standard. In addition, there is an institutional failure which translates to additional challenges in Lagos peri-urban housing developments and ultimately impairs the characteristics of housing in Lagos peri-urban. Contributing also to the chaotic development pattern is the lack of adequate monitoring of the continuous development by the building regulation authority and lack of proper documentation of the pattern of growth as seen in most peri-urban developments in developing countries (Puttal and Ravadi, 2014). In Lagos peri-urban settlements, government-led housing settlements and private-led housing settlements are better developed in terms of infrastructure than settlements constituting self-help housing in the low-income group. Armed for inadequate knowledge of the socio-economic composition of the migrants, most housing initiatives led by institutional and corporate bodies are not meeting the needs of the majority of low income and middle-income group because of affordability issues. Therefore, most exclusive gated housing developments in the peri-urban area are not occupied. The various environmental and socio-economic challenges in Lagos peri-urban settlement ultimately affect the quality of living and productivity of the residents. With these characteristics associated with peri-urban settlements in Lagos, there needs to be a case study approach to study the trend of spatial demographic expansion as it relates to residents’ quality of life, housing and environmental quality. Though there have been prior works on peri-urban study in Nigeria, none has adequately addressed the characteristics of housing development in Lagos as it should. An analysis of the characteristics of housing development in Lagos peri-urban settlements is vital because the peripheral locations in Lagos accommodate a large share of the urban population. This study focuses therefore on the assessment of spatial expansion and the policy implication on the environmental sustainability and residents’ productivity in selected peri-urban settlements in Lagos State. 2. Literature Review Pacione (2009) stated in his research work that one of the attendant problems of contemporary urbanisation in developing countries is the spatial demand for housing in the high population and the increasing globalization-induced socio-economic activities. Urbanisation is the product of movement of people from rural areas to urban areas with population growth not equating urban infrastructuresize (McGranahamand Satterthwaite, 2014). Spatial development in the peri-urban is a product of peri-urbanisation which is a direct consequence of unmanaged urbanisation, the process of agglomeration of multifunctional settlements of relatively substantial size. The level of urbanisation is the ratio of total population living in towns and cities. The rate of urbanisation is the rate of growth of urban population. It is the movement of people from rural areas to urban areas with population growth equating to urban migration (Satterthwaite, 2014).

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