2 - Right to Land

Today's lecture was a case study of Lagos, as an example of a new Megacity in the developing world. The focus was on the huge slums there and the problems that they face. The city has a population of about 13 million, and some 30-40% live in these unofficial slums in substandard conditions, where they can be evicted by the government.

In the role-playing exercise I was in the "NGO/Community Leaders" group. We assumed that the government would take over some or most of the land where our people were living, so we focused on trying to enable all the people to stay in their reduced area. This would require higher-density housing, built by the government, and would give them official status. This was probably an unrealistic demand, however we thought it was in the community's best interest, since they've been living there for the last 22 years.

One problem was where the people would live during construction. They would probably need some temporary place, and the Sociologist Group suggested moving them outside the city, and providing them with new opportunities to try and encourage them to stay there. This would then help to reverse the trend of mass migration to the cities. The City Planners group seemed to think our idea for building new higher density housing in the original slum area was o.k. The Government was willing to re-consider their original plan and not take any land away, and also to start building new housing for the slum-dwellers. The main issues were then what kinds of services and infrastructure we would need (e.g. medical clinics, schools, sanitation).

We heard about an interesting case in East Africa where something like this actually happened. New apartment blocks were built for people residing in slums, but in the end many didn't want to move because they felt attached to their homes, and the apartments did not conform to everyone's needs.