PhD Student Fazlur Bolaji Jegede reflecting on Summer School 2025
University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Oyo State Email
WITS-TUB-UNILAG URBAN LAB SUMMER SCHOOL 2025: INCLUSIVE URBAN FUTURES
The WITS-Unilag Urban Lab Summer Writing Workshop is an annual education exchange programme in conjunction with DAAD for postgraduate students. This year’s edition commenced on Monday, 26th of May, 2025 with registration of participants from countries across Africa. The opening ceremony was held at Arthur Mbanefo Centre, University of Lagos after which we proceeded on a study tour of the Redemption City in Ogun State.
The visit to the Redemption City was a hallmark of inclusive urban futures. The city has 30, 000 inhabitants according to the authorities, but with a future projection of 1.2 million inhabitants in no distant years. One fascinating thing about the city is that it is well planned to accommodate the projected population. The city has infrastructures that are ready to meet the challenges of the emerging and projected population in place as well as the prognosis of the foreseeable changing world.
The second day had lectures that treated the theme of the workshop: INCLUSIVE URBAN FUTURES. Thence, Inclusive Urban Futures is a multidisciplinary approach to solving urban problems in order to ensure the workability and livability of cities. The UN-Habitat World Cities Report of 2020 revealed that, ”more than 50% of the people who live in urban areas live in slums.” Evidently, this clearly portends a serious danger for Lagos because it falls into this category. This puts a big question mark on the readiness of Lagos to embrace the future that lies ahead of her – in terms of unabating urbanization, persisting socioeconomic inequality, social disorganization, deprivation, poverty, and health issues – all these have consequences on the city.
It is noteworthy to say that we are our environment as proved by the concept of human-environment interaction, which confirms that there is a reciprocal relationship between humans and their environments. How we want our environment and/or urban areas to be is a function of the anthropogenic activities in the environment. Whether good or bad, human actions shape the environment. Therefore, the solution to having a good environment lies with us and it is all encompassing and interconnected. It requires the efforts and the contributions of all fields, including the synergy of the stakeholders – government, communities, and the people. The word of Winston Churchill corroborates this, “we shape our buildings (cities); thereafter, they shape our lives. But it is our stories that should shape them first.” This is a pointer to the fact that the functionality and livability of a city transcends aesthetic beauty. It is a system that should be all encompassing.
Hu et al in their 2023 work made us realize that urbanization is reshaping the physical, social, and economic landscape of cities across the world. The work of Zhang in 2019 revealed that half of the world population are now resident in urban areas. This was buttressed by the findings of Kolhase in 2013, which affirmed that approximately 70% of the global population will live in cities by 2050. It is therefore evident that we have a serious issue at hand, which should be given utmost consideration and treatment in order to confront the coming storm, to prepare, and forestall any damning consequences that may ensue. Notably, these trends will shape and dictate future urban planning and governance, which require the need for sustainable inclusive urban futures.
In furtherance, Korah and Wimberly stated in their 2024 work that Africa boasts of being one of the continents in the world where urbanization is rapidly increasing with uncontrolled population growth. Population can either be a curse or benefit to a city or people depending on its use – cause and effect. Thus, Africa’s urbanization is said to be more demographic than economic. Research has shown that urban population in Africa is expected to reach 50% by 2030 and 60% by 2050.
The reason for rapid urbanization in Africa, particularly Lagos is as a result of the role that Lagos plays in Nigeria socioeconomic landscape. Lagos is the melting pot of socio-cultural activities in Nigeria and a significant city in Africa. It is a magnetic field that attracts all and sundry from within and outside Nigeria, especially our West African neighbours. Hence, there is daily migration - trooping of about 3000 people into Lagos for perceived greener pasture and opportunities. This movement is usually attributed to inequality in socioeconomic factors such as unemployment, poverty, housing deficit that results in homelessness, and lack of access to infrastructures, healthcare services, etc. In Nigeria, this represents an inequality and the portrayal of marginalization of some places compared to others. This confirms the spatial disparity that exists in Lagos – the upscale/affluent areas and the indigent/poor areas.
However, there are consequences of these present dangers, which lead to pressure on preexisting infrastructures, health epidemic, crime, and other social vices on cities. These challenges must be treated as a matter of urgency and must be nipped in the bud before they escalate into a full scale epidemic. The word of the popular American broadcaster, Larry King resonates with this when he said that, “crime is a major tourist attraction. You have crime in your community, they will flock to your city.” This is in sync with the concept of human-environment interaction – the circular causal relationship between humans and their environment, the theory of political economy of health, and social disorganization theory vis-à-vis government policies.
In conclusion, it is imperative to reiterate that an inclusive urban future is the one that is all encompassing in its approach to solving urban problems. For this to be possible, there should be proper planning and synergy among stakeholders that are involved. There must not be a disconnect between the people and government. The preexisting needs as well as the future needs of all the residents as well as visitors, old and young, and people living with disabilities should be captured in the planning process to develop the cities. There should be consideration for not only urban managerialism, but urban entrepreneurialism as well. The concerned stakeholders, especially the government must be intentional about development by formulating workable policies and using its political will to enforce the policies. Importantly, the government must begin with an end in mind.
