Modelling Future Urban Scenarios in Developing Countries: An Application Case Study in Lagos, Nigeria

Abstract

We consider urban sustainability issues in developing countries, with a focus on urban growth. The need for urban management tools that are able to provide prospective scenarios is addressed. Urban simulations can represent a useful approach to understanding the consequences of current planning policies—or their incompleteness. Nevertheless, simulations of future urban growth are usually quite difficult without tools which embrace the complexity of the urban system. We describe an urban-growth simulation for the city of Lagos in Nigeria, in which an urban cellular automata (CA) prototype is used. We propose a bottom-up approach which integrates land-use factors with the dynamic approach of CA for modelling future urban land-use scenarios. The model for Lagos was calibrated and tested with the aid of measured time-series data on land use, through a set of spatial metrics and κ-coefficients. A twenty-year simulation, until 2020, was run. The simulation results are realistic and achieve a high level of detail, confirming the effectiveness of the proposed model.