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The Challenges of Managing Urban Growth and Implication to Real Estate Professionals

Posted on 09 Jun 2011 by admin | Filled under: regulatory-compliance

1.Introduction

The process of urban population growth can be explained in term of natural increase in population, rural-urban migration and city annexation into surrounding rural areas. Urban city or mega city within a country has been a victim of any urbanization because they offer number of competitive advantages such as higher wages, education, health care, and social cultural attractions, that all result in a better quality of life for the poorest members of the society as mentioned by Bronwen (2006).

As much as the opportunities offered by these urban cities, they simultaneously present urban management challenges such as housing shortages, inadequate infrastructures, poor urban quality of life etc.

In foregoing discussion references will be made to Nigeria as one of the most populous country in Africa, and most of these challenges and implication it poses for real estate professionals will be analyzed.

2.Concept of Urbanization

Urbanization as described by Agboola (2006) is a global phenomenon and is a process of special concentrations of urban populations that is premised on some basic push and pulls factors called urban transformation forces. Agboola classified these factors into three major processes namely natural increase in population, rural-urban migration and city annexation into the surrounding of rural areas.

Most mega cities of the world are experiencing population explosion and this is due to the reason that urban cities offer a number of competitive advantages such as higher wages, education, health care and social and cultural attractions; all which give an improved quality of life for resident and economic growth for countries.

Unemployment, dependency relationship, low income level and inadequate infrastructure on the other hand are common characteristic of rural area and the proportional increase in the population of urban dwellers is largely due to transformational forces of rural-urban migration.

Nigeria for example is urbanizing at an astonishing pace with a population of 88.5million as at 1991 and by 2006, the population rise to 140million according to provisional result by National Population Commission Showing an increase of 60% within 16years.The country is among those with highest urban growth rate in the world due to migration from the rural to urban area as reported by the FGN (2003).

Lagos, the former capital of the country is peculiar with this urban population. The city is growing in size by more than 10 percent per year, which will make it the third largest city in the World by 2020 according to DFID (2005) and currently its population stood at 18million. The city is Nigeria's financial, commercial and industrial nerve centre with over 2000 manufacturing industries and over 200 financial institutions.

According to Fashola (2008) Lagos city alone harbor above 60 percent of the Nigeria's total industrial investment, it accounts for more than 40% of all labour emoluments paid in the country.

Fashola further said that statistics put the number of people per square kilometer in the city of Lagos or 18:150 with a land area of 738 square kilometers and a population of well 18million. This was compared with Mexico City's land area of 2072 square kilometers with 8400 people per square kilometer and New York's population of 17,800,000 and its land area of 8,683 square kilometer and 2050 people per square kilometer.

With this analysis, it is quite clear that city of Lagos has attained a mega city and a lot of challenges will be faced by the Real Estate professional in managing the menace associating with this over population city.