ancient cities

protractedness of litigation over land in Lagos
since the colonial period. The Lewis v. Bankole
case, decided by the Supreme Court of Nigeria in
1912, affirmed the right of inheritance of property
by female descendants. The Amodu Tijani landmark
judgment by the Privy Council in London in
1921 upheld indigenous land rights in Lagos
against the claims of the British colonial administration.
Land speculation is rife, especially by indigenous
Lagosians (omo onile), who continue to fuel
violent crises in the community. This has contributed
to the rise of the “area boys” (delinquent
youth) in the downtown sections of the city.
Poor urban planning and waste management
have been the bane of Lagos and its suburbs since
the early twentieth century. The outbreak of
bubonic plague in the 1920s and 1930s necessitated
slum clearance on Lagos Island and the creation
of new settlements at Yaba and Ebute Metta
on the mainland. Government policies have failed
to check unregulated urban and suburban development
in Lagos, and poor waste management
remains a great threat.
A long-standing feature of Lagos is the inadequacy
of urban facilities in the face of a massive
population increase down to the twenty-first century.
With the massive increase in the population
from 73,766 in 1911 to 655,246 in 1963 and
more than 12 million by 2005, the gap between
demand for and supply of water, electricity, and
municipal transport facilities has become unbridgeable.
Various government interventions, especially
during the petroleum boom years of the 1970s,
have failed to keep pace with demand in the face
of the sharp decline in the value of the national
currency, official corruption, and poor maintenance
culture. A 2006 initiative by the federal
government, the Lagos Mega City Project, is still
unfolding.
Lagos has played a pioneering role in Nigerian
political, social, and economic development. The
first political parties (Peoples Union, 1908;
Nigerian National Democratic Party, 1923) and
the first pan-Nigerian political parties (Lagos/
Nigerian Youth Movement, 1934; the National
Council of Nigeria and Cameroon, later known as
the National Council of Nigerian Citizens, 1944)
were established there. With a vibrant press, multiethnic
population, and educational facilities,
Lagos has been the hotbed of ethnic, cultural, and
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anticolonial nationalism. It was the birthplace of
radical labor unionism, anchored on the agitation
for higher cost of living allowances in the 1940s.
Lagos is also the entertainment capital of Nigeria
with a large number of hotels and recreation centers.
In music and social lifestyle, Lagos typifies the
Nigerian urban milieu, a meeting point of various
cultures and a theater of intense interpersonal and
intergroup relations.
See also Colonial City
Further Readings
Ayodeji Olukoju
Gandy, Mathew. 2006. “Planning, Anti-planning and the
Infrastructure Crisis Facing Metropolitan Lagos.”
Urban Studies 43(2):371–96.
Mann, Christine. 2007. Slavery and the Birth of an
African City: Lagos, 1760–1900. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
Packer, George. 2006. “The Megacity: Lagos Becomes
an Urban Test Case.” The New Yorker, November 13,
pp. 62–75.
Salome, Abdou Maliq. 2004. For the City Yet to Come:
Changing African Life in Four Cities. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
Tijani, Hakeem Ibikunle. 2006. Nigeria’s Urban History:
Past and Present. Lanham, MD: University Press of
America.
La N d de v e L o p m e N t
Land development is a process of land use change
most often initiated by the private sector, managed
by the public sector, and subject to intense social
conflict as existing and future interests collide. This
is almost always true, regardless of the place of
land development—whether in an urban neighborhood
or at the city’s edge. Urban land development
can alter the character of neighborhoods through
gentrification or revitalization; urban fringe development
can lead to air and water pollution and
declines in adjoining urban area viability while
also providing for safe, affordable housing.
The land development process in the United
States occurs in a highly decentralized system of
governance and public finance. Authority for land