Rethinking Lagos Radio Show

All around the world, what constitutes a livable city is constantly in flux, usually following new cultural, social, or technological trends and discoveries. Our engagement with people on new ways of thinking about Lagos made one thing clear: government, civil society, and the public had been in thrall to decades-old myths and stereotypes. Generally, it has been convenient to lay the blame for urban dysfunction on certain, usually disadvantaged groups of people within society, leading to a mismatch between the solutions proffered and the real problems. The result is that those solutions have consistently failed. Read more here: researchinlagos.org/lup_debunking.

All around the world, what constitutes a livable city is constantly in flux, usually following new cultural, social, or technological trends and discoveries. Our engagement with people on new ways of thinking about Lagos made one thing clear: government, civil society, and the public had been in thrall to decades-old myths and stereotypes. Generally, it has been convenient to lay the blame for urban dysfunction on certain, usually disadvantaged groups of people within society, leading to a mismatch between the solutions proffered and the real problems. The result is that those solutions have consistently failed. Read more here: researchinlagos.org/lup_debunking.

All around the world, what constitutes a livable city is constantly in flux, usually following new cultural, social, or technological trends and discoveries. Our engagement with people on new ways of thinking about Lagos made one thing clear: government, civil society, and the public had been in thrall to decades-old myths and stereotypes. Generally, it has been convenient to lay the blame for urban dysfunction on certain, usually disadvantaged groups of people within society, leading to a mismatch between the solutions proffered and the real problems. The result is that those solutions have consistently failed. Read more here: researchinlagos.org/lup_debunking.

Street trading and hawking are not peculiar to urban Lagos. These activities often arise from socioeconomic realities essential to the proper functioning of society. Developing nations with large informal economies tend to have pronounced levels of street trading, which is a major source of jobs for the growing urban poor. Street trading and hawking that threatens mobility are often the consequences of policy failures. Read more here: researchinlagos.org/lup_debunking.

The general opinion that land ownership is the best investment is not only a myth, but a dangerous concoction that has led to land grabbing and speculation, fraud, family-land feud, perpetual tenant-landlord tension, and suboptimal use of land resources. On aggregate, it has perverse incentives. Read more here: researchinlagos.org/lup_debunking.

At a special session of the National Economic Council in March 2018, Bill Gates dropped a bombshell. The Nigerian Federal Government Economic Recovery and Growth plan was flawed, he claimed, because it paid much less attention to human capacity development than it did to infrastructure. Gates' logic was simple: “to anchor the economy over the long term, investment in infrastructure and competitiveness must go hand-in-hand with investments in the people.” Read more here: researchinlagos.org/lup_debunking

In 2007, the Lagos State government promulgated a law banning the activities of cart pushers, the ubiquitous informal workers who go from door to door collecting and evacuating cartloads of waste from many neighborhoods (poor and rich ones alike) around the city. The prohibitive law completely overlooks the fact that cart pushers have stepped in to fill an essential gap in the formal waste collection system: Read more here: researchinlagos.org/lup_debunking

The informal economy is so-called because it exists mainly outside the formal oversight of government. Mostly comprising low-end, low-skilled occupations such as street trading, waste picking, or care-giving, it nevertheless is the lifeblood of many cities today, providing flexible livelihoods and services, and contributing significantly to urban economies. Read more here: researchinlagos.org/lup_debunking

#Endsars movement

Criminals. Miscreants. Urchins. Addicts. Thugs. Hoodlums. Prostitutes. Vagabonds. In many jurisdictions, including Lagos, these are the undignifying labels slapped on young people living in the under-served communities commonly called urban slums. Although little evidence exists linking slum habitation with criminality, the stereotypes are perpetuated and reaffirmed in popular and policy discourses on urban renewal and city regeneration. Read more here: researchinlagos.org/lup_debunking

It is easy to assume that the solution to traffic congestion in Lagos State is to build more roads or widen the existing roads so more cars can move at any one time. However, moving a large population with a density of around 6,871 residents per square kilometre with cars will continue to be an issue regardless of how many more roads are built. More roads will result in more cars on the roads, a vicious cycle that will produce more traffic congestion. Read more here: researchinlagos.org/lup_debunking

With an estimated population of 19,400,000 and a population density of 6934persons per sq. km, Lagos is without a doubt among the most populous cities in the world. This has resulted in many concluding that Lagos is overpopulated. Read more here: researchinlagos.org/lup_debunking