Piecemeal Urbanisation at the Peripheries of Lagos

Abstract

The peripheral contexts of urban agglomerations in sub-Saharan Africa are usually discussed in reference to peri-urban literature, which tends to be largely descriptive rather than theoretically engaged. The urban peripheral contexts of North America and Europe, however, have been highly differentiated as part of suburban literature, with a flood of proposed terms to better address them. The goal of this article, whilst engaging with peri-urban literature, is to confront the urbanisation occurring at the peripheries of Lagos with suburban theory. For the peripheries of sub-Saharan Africa to contribute meaningfully to the suburban debate, they must first be differentiated. This article attempts to show the diversity of forms, actors and processes that are producing peripheral expansion in Lagos, and the complexity and ambiguity of the multiple land systems at work. This challenges any easy assumptions about pervasive poverty and informality in the urban peripheries of Lagos, much less sub-Saharan Africa in general. In conclusion, the relevance and appropriateness of the suburb will be questioned, and its capacity to adequately address the diversity of forms and processes at work in the peripheral urbanisation of Lagos.

Key words:

• Lagos
• peripheral expansion
• suburbs
• suburbanisation
• piecemeal urbanisation
• peri-urbanisation
• sub-Saharan Africa

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Erratum

Note on Contributor

Lindsay Sawyer is a PhD candidate at the Future Cities Laboratory, ETH Zürich.

Notes

1. For example Harris 2010; Ekers, Hamel and Keil 2012; Mabin et al. 2013.

2. See Adell 1999: Mbiba and Huchzermeyer 2002; Harris 2010; Mabin et al. 2013; Nüssli and Schmid 2014.

3. Again see Adell 1999; Mbiba and Huchzermeyer 2002; and also Marshall et al. 2009.

4. This research is done within the framework of the research project ‘Planetary Urbanization in Comparative Perspective’ based at the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore <http://www.futurecities.ethz.ch/module/urban-sociology/>. The term ‘piecemeal urbanisation’, as used in the title, emerged as a result of discussions with Christian Schmid during a period of fieldwork in Lagos in November 2013 to describe the dominant process of urbanisation in Lagos.

5. Student at University of Lagos, in conversation with author, November 2013.

6. By ‘knowledge edifice’, Pieterse is here referring quite literally to the building of centres for African urban research; however it also meaningfully applies more metaphorically to the building of bodies of knowledge.

7. Lagos state government estimated the population of all its Local Government Areas to be 17,552,942 in 2006, and projects it to be 21,204,503 in 2012 through the household survey done in 2012. Interestingly, United Nations estimations consistently state between 10 and 11 million for 2010; 18 million is used here as a commonly quoted figure for Lagos. Importantly, no population estimates refer to the contiguous metropolitan region, which falls in both Lagos and Ogun states.

8. Interview with the author, November 2013.

9. I must credit architect Tosin Oshinowo for this observation.

10. Here, Mabogunje is referring to the widespread practice of falsifying claims of ownership for land to date before the Land Use Act of 1978, thereby gaining automatic CofO from the state government. Although this is far from easily done.