Browsing by Author "Savolainen, Maria"

Lagos is the biggest city not just in Nigeria but also in the Sub-Saharan Africa. This megacity has a reputation of being the most dangerous and chaotic city in the world. Despite that Lagos is facing an infrastructural crisis and most of the city acts through informal means, it has its own way to survive and operate. The purpose of this study is to create a picture of the urban structure of Lagos Metropolitan Area and compare it with the existing urban structure models. The purpose is also to discover the possible affects of existing zoning plans on the current structure and dynamism of the city. Again, the aim of this research is to study the characteristics of the metropolis and reflect them to the postmodern concepts of Myers's that intend to explain the nature of modern African cities. This study tries to provide new perspectives on the image of the study area. However, this study tries not to draw a detailed picture of every district of the metropolis but aims at highlighting the dominant features of the city. This study adopts qualitative research methods and is descriptive by its nature. The primary data consists of researches, maps, scientific articles, project documents and different kinds of publications concerning the for example landuse and dominant features of different districts and neighborhoods of Lagos. The data collected from these sources is combined and analyzed in order to create a visualization over the urban structure of Lagos. The secondary data was collected during the field trip in Lagos in 2009 and consists of observation notes. It serves as a supportive tool in the descriptive part of the work. The study concludes that the city structure in Lagos consists much of poor residential districts and slum areas. Most of the citizen live in poverty as medium- or high-grade districts do not exist nearly at all. Lagos is often described as industrial centre of Nigeria, but in reality the industrial activity is not particularly high since the weak infrastructure and low security situation of the city does not attract investors. Again, the structural analysis discovers that the city has currently just one clear core area. The large area of the metropolis would demand several central business districts to improve the mobility and selection of public services of the city. This study suggests that Lagos can be very easily described and expressed with the concepts presented by Myers. On the grounds of his concepts, Lagos has several features typical of modern African city. Colonial era has left its fingerprints both on the city structure and dynamics. The informal sector has a remarkable role in Lagos and violence is a constant part of the streets. Despite that, Lagos has slowly found its place among the global urban centres. Its significance as a centre of trade and culture keeps growing in the future. On the basis if this research it can be argued that there is a great need for urban structure studies in Africa. Often areas that appear as disorganized shantytowns include some structures and operating models of their own. By creating updated structure models and studies it is possible to affect positively on urban planning trends and also local development.