PROPERTY ARTICLES

Professor David Aradeon, a Nigeria National Order of Merit recipient in this paper, examines Housing Estate Development, vis-a-vis its strength, weakness, opportunities and threats at a forum organised by the Nigerian Institute of Architects(NIA), Lagos State chapter.

Introduction. I would like to thank you for your invitation to speak to the issues of Housing Estate Development. I do have to admit that it has been a challenge for me to focus this keynote address on such a clearly defined topic. The reasons are many; but I will admit to the generic reason; the environment.

Lagos is a series of islands, each of which is linked and bound, separated as well as articulated by the lagoon; the lagoon shapes the geometry and geography of Lagos and, the strategy for the development of Lagos. Given the history of Lagos, the diversity of its culture and its place as the functional centre of the Nigerian space, Lagos culture shaped the pattern for the housing environment.

To the extent that public fund was invested on the creation of Housing Estates for the civil and public servants, the policy is selective and discriminating. As a public policy on Housing, which spends the tax payers Naira and the national common wealth, it marginalised the private sector and excludes the rest of the citizens who are on the fringe. As a strategy for housing provision, it is a slow and piecemeal process for accumulating housing stock. Housing estate development fragments the city.

During the last 12 yeags, public policy on privatisation and commercialisation of housing has encouraged private sector participation. While the growth of housing estates has been impressive, the price offerings for a typical 3-bedroom unit have all but priced the highest echelon of the civil servants cadre out of the housing market.

Today, when progressive public policies should be focused more on massive comprehensive and mixed housing programmes, mass transit fast speed transportation systems and public health for the majority of our citizens on the economic fringe, our strategy for housing continues to emphasize Estate Housing development.

Forces which shaped the strategy of Housing Estate Development.

"To understand and appreciate the reasons for the development of Housing Estates as a public strategy, we would like to briefly re-examine the forces which helped shape this policy. For a metropolis with Mega status aspirations, and a projected population of 25 million by the year 2015, Estates housing continues the fragmentation of the city. It stretches the resources of the State for infrastructure services; it celebrates Gated communities and the idea of public-private partnership as a sine qua non for development.

Within the gated estates, the organization of space and the architecture that fills that space betray our fears and insecurity. The gated communities and the grilled-in existence we live may protect us, but in reality, they define the limits to our freedom in an urban environment.

Awori Lagos

As we noted earlier, the lagoon shapes the geometry and geography of the city of Lagos. It also articulates the shoreline and its many swamps, and accentuates the wetlands and the fascinating and idyllic character of the creeks.'

The Awori first settled on Iddo Island and then moved to the present site of Iga Idugaran in Isale Eko. Both locations were an high grounds.

The extended family compound was the unit space and house form of the architecture. Compared to the British colonial conjugal space and house form in which each space defines single and specific function, the architecture of the Awori space and house form is a highly interactive, activity focus space within an open closed but walled in spaces.

The spatial organization of the Awori town is a concentric organisation of traditional urban structure which, radiates from the core to the periphery. This structure reflects the urban values and culture of the Yoruba Awori tradition. This core is dominated by the palace of the Oba, the public space and the market place, and the complex compounds of the Chiefs including the Chiefs responsible for the defense of the city state. As Ezebiro observed, this defensive strategy places the expendable social groups in the first, second, third, etc., lines of defense as buffer but interactive zones.2 That was the structure of the core Island prior to the intervention of the British colonial system.

British colonial, Lagos, since 1861

a). Engineering Access

Conditioned by the geometry and geography of Lagos, and driven by British colonial interest for resource control, engineering technology enabled the colonial administration to build a network of bridges and causeways to transport and move resources: the north/ south Railways to collect cash crops from plantation centres; port for shipping cocoa, groundnuts, oil palm, ginger, etc., from Apapa wharf to British ports and manufactured goods from British factories to and through Lagos ports for distribution to the Nigerian markets.

Housing estates (GRA) for the colonial officers were built in cities, administrative centres, towns and service and collection centres: Iddo, (terminus), Ebute Metta/Yaba (office and engineering workshop) Port at Lagos and Apapa as well as all the centres for the collection of cash crops from the plantations: lbadan, Oshogbo, Kano, Jos, Enugu, Kafanchan, etc.

Coastal Swamp Drainage and Landfill and Hydraulic Sandfill

In the period 1942 - 1946, a total of 4,196 acres of coastal swamp was drained as part of Malaria control, strategy. These include, Onikan (120), Elesin (36), NE. Ikoyi (136), Iddo (60) and Five Cowrie Creek (417). In addition, landfill and hydraulic sandfill strategy was deployed to create additional land areas for housing. Apapa, Victoria Island, Onikan-South west Ikoyi, etc.,

GRAS (Housing Estates) were built in all the major and minor administrative districts for the colonial officers. In the Lagos colony, Ikoyi, Apapa, Yaba for Infectious diseases hospital and Yaba college. Support and fringe communities, Obalende, Ajegunle, Abule Oja and Abule Ijesha respectively grew in proximity to the GRA Housing Estates. The cooks, stewards and gardeners working for the colonial officers lived in those communities.

Colonial Building Codes and Zoning Regulations.

Land use policies and programmes were designed to .contain and restrict the expansion of indigenous Lagos 'to the core area around the Oba's palace. In addition to the Estate housing for colonial officials, site and service plot estates were created in the rest of the city for the buffer cultures:--Sierra Leoneans in Olowogbowo, and Brazilians in mid town Lagos. Cordon sanitaire and for defence shield, the effective use of the army and police barracks as special estate housing in Obalende; the West African Frontier force in Onikan, and the Hausa Constabulary on Catholic Mission Street.

The impact of these colonial policies and programmes was not only designed to separate the races and nationalities by class, the Europeans apart, educated Africans from the indigenous enclaves, but also to create the core and the fringe cultures. Within the GRAS, those on the fringe cultures,---- cooks, stewards, gardeners live within the core. The servants quarters was the unintended but "hidden housing subsidy" for the low income fringe culture groups.

Housing Corporations and FHA

In the period beginning in 1959, Housing Corporations began Site and Service schemes for Estate Housing for the Nigerian Senior Civil personnel and the credit worthy Nigerians in private and public life. Ilupeju, Gbagada, Omole, Magodo, Maruwa, Otedola, etc. and Federal Housing Authority, promoted Festac town and Festival village. In the 1960 decade, housing estates were being built to target high income earners in the public life as well as the political class. Palm Groove, Okupe, Shonibare, Oyadiran, Mende, Oyadiran, AJao, in Anthony and Morounfolu, and Agbara Estate, an industrial and Housing estate on Badagry Express road.

Since the 1990 period, the Tele-Evangelism groups have in recent years had the most potent and devastating impact on land use in the country. The Religiosity, the spread of various religious enclaves and their communities on the Lagos Ibadan expressway demonstrates the single focus trajectory of the special groups to the exclusion of other interests today.

Slum Clearance

Urban Renewal or Poor People removal is the modern state strategy for the gentrification process in town planning. In 1861, the natives were driven out of the Marina by the British colonial administration to make room for English trading houses on the waterfront and "promenade". The natives were also removed from mid ~town Lagos to make way for the Race course.

If the central Lagos slum clearance of 1955 marked the transition of power from the colonial to our national government, the ambitious scale of the re-housing project in new Lagos --- Surulere to where they were to be re-housed and the void left in Central Lagos for fifty years underscored the politics for the slum clearance. The pre-dawn 1990 eradication of Maroko, thirty-five years later by the army bulldozers confirmed the extent to which a Nigerian government had become focused to the goals of gentrification as a process restructuring the landscape.

Lekki Peninsular, the new frontier Lagos

As the impact of governance wanes, and infrastructure and service systems continue to fracture, the emergent structure of 21St century Lagos will be dominated by communities of special interests. These communities are the pressure points for access in the pursuit of its special interests.

In the process of Colonial experience the politics of community groups and its assumed real or imagined interests have been shaped by the politics of exclusion of the larger community interests. In many ways, the benefits of community groups have been mixed. As part of the forces that made the expansion and growth of Lagos possible, they have also made it impossible for the orderly growth and development of the city.

Special communities, like gated communities, (gated for security), restrict and redefine our individual freedom to move freely in the city; they induce the average city dweller to create municipal services---bore hole for water, generator for power, etc., --- in addition to payments of monthly bills for the same services to the city; they promote the flowering of the gate keeper's culture.

No where is this more evident than in Lekki peninsular, the frontier city begun by the State Government in the 1980 decade, where land owning communities have matured into the preparation of the layout planning of their land area. As each layout plan for the Estate Housing development gets keyed for access to the Lekki Express corridor, "developments" have emerged along the ribbon. Joined by speculators---- private developers and commercial banks, the city has lost the battle for a model functional housing environment in Lagos. In spite of the symptoms: failure of zoning regulation and building codes and, abject failure and absence of regulatory control measures, development goes on at a frightening pace and traffic jams gets worse by the day. Vehicular traffic on either side of the divide access the expressway at will. Like its antecedents elsewhere in the city, Lekki expressway has become a distributor road. The residents of Victoria Gardens and Badore leave their homes as early as six in the morning for a journey by car that used to take thirty minutes.

Meanwhile, the hopefuls among Lekki residents continue to wait for the dawn of the fourth bridge, which is planned to link Ikorodu to Lekki peninsular,;, the chairman of Eti osa Local government asks the stake holders ----the banks, the construction companies, etc., for help while the functional chaos spreads beyond Lekki.

The growth of Lagos since colonial intervention has been the story of the Privatization of public indigenous space for private/ individual use to the exclusion of the larger public. Private privileges/territoriality exclusion, selection, closure, enclosures, as engine of growth and development of the city.

This exclusive prerogative has been institutionalized over time; in the process, the culture of the gate keeper has been nurtured and has flowered to the extent that these forces which have and continue to engineer the growth and development of the city, have also been largely responsible for hampering the real and meaningful development of the city.

In conclusion, I would like to leave you with a thought. My Hypothesis on the meaning and significance of growth and real development of human settlements/ cities are different aspects of understanding the differences between the content and its envelope; quality and quantity, time and space of the growth of a city through time. An examination of this hypothesis on Lagos and its environment of Housing estates will enable us to articulate the difference between the physical growth and size, growth and development.