Megacidade capitalista africana

Quartz Africa 05-10-2019, por Ndubisi Onwuanyi

https://qz.com/africa/1722706/how-lagos-became-africas-largest-megacity/

The unplanned journey that led Lagos to becoming an overwhelmed megacity

Lagos was an orderly urban environment 70 years ago. This was the case from the 1950s, when the city was a federal territory through to the 1960s when it became federal capital – a status it held until 1991.

Lagos 1999

The foundations of orderliness for any city are planning and management. Lagos had this in place in the early days. The city was governed by an elected Lagos City Council, Nigeria’s oldest, established in 1900. It was governed according to colonial legislation, particularly the 1948 Building Line regulations and the 1957 Public Health Law.

The city was much smaller and was made up of Lagos Island (Eko) which included Ikoyi and Obalende neighborhoods. It was a beautiful environment that featured Portuguese, Brazilian, and British Victorian architecture. Its streets were clean and tree-lined. Urban crime was virtually non-existent.

Governance standards declined when political control of Lagos, and the rest of Nigeria, came under military rule between 1966 and 1979 and again from 1984 to 1999. Proximity of the two capitals – federal and state, respectively—in the Ikoyi and Ikeja neighborhoods of the same conurbation, put more pressure on the city. In the 1970s the city expanded to link up previously distinct areas such as Ikeja, Mushin, Orile, Ojo, Oshodi and Agege. (..) 

2020-03-15 

Urbanização na África

Publicado em urbanNext
Maio 2014, por Jérôme Chenal
https://urbannext.net/the-african-city/

The African City: Urbanisation in Africa
Excerpt from The West African City by Jérôme Chenal, published by EPFL Press.

 

The history of African cities is ancient. For instance, we know today that urbanisation in Africa existed long before Arab and Portuguese influences (Coquery-Vidrovitch, 1993). However, while this urban history is ancient, it is clear that Europeans introduced a new type of city based on grid patterns and ‘monumental’ architecture (Coquery-Vidrovitch, Georg, 1996). In the colonial era, the ‘real’ city was that of the whites (founded on the European economy), while ‘indigenous’ areas were not considered part of the city and tended to be identified with the village model (i.e. without rules). The importation of traditional village building techniques further reinforced this idea. 

 

But beyond the relationship between the white and black city, this separation marked “the collective imagination, giving credence to the belief that ‘African culture’ (traditional, authentic, etc.) was that of the village” (Coquery-Vidrovitch, 1997). Thus, the African city only exists through the lens of European culture – or so recent works still tell us.

 

The metropolitanisation process of Third World countries is a form of urban development that is measured namely by urban sprawl, the development of large-scale agglomerations, and the formation of a hierarchical armature of cities at the global level (Bassand, 1997). The African continent is not an exception to this rule, with the emergence of ever larger, increasingly populated cities in a part of the world that, today, still has the highest population growth rates in the world (Schoumaker, 1999, Tabutin, Schoumaker, 2004). Hence, the African city should take its place in the network of globalised cities, in this de-territorialised universe of great metropolises. (Continua)

2014-05-05