Nigeria's urban open spaces : an inquiry into their evolution, planning and landscape qualities.

Abstract

The current lack of concern for attractive and functional urban open spaces in Nigeria is incompatible with its rapid rate of urbanisation, its urban population with rising affluence and leisure pursuits and the need to stimulate pride in the built-landscape. Open space in Nigerian cities is today for the most part little more than no man's land, passed over as an apparently irrelevant detail in the country's physical planning and in its attempts to cope with ever faster economic acid population growth. This thesis seeks to study the factors responsible for the present neglect of open spaces and lack of concern. Three case studies of typical Nigerian towns namely, Ile- Ife, Kano and Jos, are presented to illustrate the magnitude of the present open space problems. Selected examples of private and public open spaces, which are either traditional or contemporary in origin, and including public squares, sacred gardens, town ccmmons, courtyard gardens, the royal gardens, and the private gardens of the garden suburbia and urban parks© are also presented to illustrate their landscape character. The three towns studied are shown to be grossly deficient in the necessary amount and range of different kinds of urban open spaces partly through inadequacies of planning and partly through inadequacies of local government. A new administrative structure for open space planning and maintenance, based on a modified version of the existing Open Space Development Commissions in Anambra and Into State and the Parks and Gardens Unit of the University of Ife, is proposed; and the arguments in favour of open space provision are restated in the light of the evidence presented in the thesis.