Abuja: Nigeria’s Spatial Economic Turmoil and Urban Development Disarray

Abuja, Nigeria as a befitting Federal Capital Territory, centrally located, without the defects of Lagos was spawned in 1975. The site was chosen for its location at the center of the nation, its small population and for political reasons. In the process, a Master Plan was developed. However, subsequent governments in Abuja abused the integrity of the Master Plan and that resulted in Abuja urbanization and housing inadequacy. The most vulnerable is that, the urban poor had to arrange, on their own, where to live and that resulted in shanty settlements, hence “spatial dialectics,” informal volumetric and unvolumetric combination now called the “spatial house”, “open house” or “house without limit”. This work aimed to document the problems associated with inappropriate implementation of the Abuja Master Plan that resulted in Abuja urbanization and housing inadequacy and proffers solutions to the Abuja housing problems. The authors adopted content based analysis, qualitative research method that involved data from primary and secondary sources. The Abuja Master Plan was elaborated to put in place, sustainable urban spatial environment for all groups and activities to be carried out in the Capital Territory. It provided low-income settlement areas, to be built by the government and occupied by the public servants; the private sector servants did not appear to be properly provided for. The current Abuja housing settlements are not integrated. There is need for the formal, informal settlements and the Abuja urban actors to be talking and link with the Central City infrastructure to create a diverse economy and economic empowerment of all.

Urbanization which occurs without adequate industrialization, sufficient formal employment or secure wages, has condemned burgeoning urban populations in the Third World to poor-quality housing. The problem has been compounded by a lack of government funds for housing subsidies, by inflated land prices boosted by housing needs and speculation, and by real-estate profiteering on the part of the upper and middle classes. The operation of the class structure of Third World cities nowhere is more geographical explicit than in the composition and working of the housing market. Only the small upper and middle classes in Third World cities have income, job security and credit worthiness to purchase or rent houses in properly surveyed, serviced and legally conveyed developments (Dickenson et al., 1983). Urbanization in Lagos resulted from Lagos, not having the capacity to accommodate the population growth and housing inadequacy.
In May 1967, Lagos emerged as both the Federal Capital of Nigeria as well as the capital of Lagos State with the creation of states and the continued retention of Lagos as the Federal Capital was seriously questioned. The dual role became a source of embarrassing political and administrative complications with the result of that, Lagos became not only unlivable and unserviceable, but also ungovern-It wanted all the existing population to be moved out of the territory. That was why it authorized not only a census of economic assets of all the inhabitants of the territory but also undertook to pay compensation for all their owners outside of the territory (Jibril, 2006, citing Mabogunje in Ayileka & Kalgo, 2001. In the process of establishing a befitting new nation's capital, a Master Plan of the Abuja Federal Capital Territory was designed. The resultant Master Plan was prepared such that land use, infrastructure, housing, transportation, recreation, economic and social services are coordinated and inter-related, Olaitan (2004), citing Abba (2003). Successive governments in Abuja have neglected these principles. As such, a series of distortions to the concept, direction and implementation of the master plan are prevalent today (Olaitan, 2004).
As a result of these changes in the Abuja Master Plan and policy inconsistencies, the Abuja Central City designed to be a model city is not sustainable. It is divided between success and failures, rich and poor. It has potentials to flourish, but in most part, impoovished. The Central City is characterized by urban dialectics, dualistic living and infiltration of the formal settlement areas by informal settlers because of provision of services to the inhabitants of the formal settlement areas. There exist, a clear disparity in the socio-economic base of the two settlements yet, they co-exist. The two settlements co-existing within the formal settlement areas of the Central City are not integrated yet, because of nearness to their jobs and survival, the informal settlers infiltrating the formal settlement areas characterized as the urban poor, find their ways into the formal settlement areas of the Central City. In order to provide services and earn their living, the urban poor, through self-efforts, provide their shelters on government vacant lands, abandoned buildings and on city side-walks (Plate 1). The informal settlement areas within the Central City of Abuja are not integrated into the Central City infrastructure and that is one of the major challenges of the city as a result, promoting urban poor growth that resulted in squatter settlements.
A typical space becomes the shelter/house and the house becomes the space (for most of these people who are security guards, their relations and friends) in the case of urban poor and urban poor housing in Abuja. In most cases, these spaces are without spatially distributed objects yet, they are side by side with formal settlements without proper links and visually acceptable urban objects, This phenomenon is different from those of the destitutes/homeless people in the city. The informal inhabitants are more or less fixed in location (even though improper location) and actively dependent on the socioeconomic activities of the urban economy. To that effect, Abuja urbanization is growing more than the area's urban development vis-à-vis housing and economic resources. In the formal sense, spaces can be defined and differentiated, however same cannot be said in the informal, hence "spatial dialectics". Within the space is the spatial housing characterized by informal volumetric and unvolumetric combination now called the "spatial house", "open house" or "house without limit" (Plate 1). Adeponle (2013) observed that Abuja city is growing faster (13%) than the provisions of its Master Plan. It is fast turning into an environmental embarrassment, with developments springing up in gross isolation of zoning and other planning codes. Abuja, which was supposed to be an epitome of beauty and an enlightened vision of city development, has suffered over the years from unnecessary distortions in the implementation of its Master Plan. among numerous others, namely: "the visual amenity", defined as the general attractiveness of the environment, and "the cultural content" of the city, which is a property of the city capable of projecting significant aspects of the lifestyle of its inhabitants to the international community (Uloko, 2005). Madrid, the capital of Spain, is situated at an altitude of 2148 feet near the geometrical center of the Peninsula on an arid plateau bounded in the northwest by the Sierra de Guadarrama. The place is first mentioned in connection with one of the periodical incursions of the kings of Leon into the territory of the Arabs. In the year 939

Challenges of Abuja
Ramiro II, King of Leon, advanced towards a place called "Magerit"-an advanced strongpoint of the Arabs defending their Kingdom of Toledo-destroyed its walls, and abandoned it. This fortified settlement which was situated in a strategically favourable position was the origin of Madrid (Gutkind, 1967).  (Pitte, 1977;Bell, 1981).
Malawi, Nigeria, and Tanzania have officially moved their capitals to Lilongwe, Abuja, and Dodoma, respectively. There are plans to move the Ivory Coasts capital from Abidjan to Yamoussoukro. In all four cases, a central location has been politically expedient, but the costs of the move have been a considerable economic burden to the country as a whole; the development of other areas has inevitably suffered. Arguments for a move are often phrased in terms of regional development, limiting the growth of the present metropolis and more equal accessibility to all sectors of the population, especially in cases where the colonial capital was monopolized by one ethnic group. There is also a desire to move away from colonial memories and constraints to a new town which can be given a more African structure. However, the old capital's location and infrastructure may make it more attractive to industry and commerce than a more central location, as the old centers had under colonial rule been trade centers in produce exports (Peil & Sada, 1984 (Mlia, 1975;Potts, 1984). The Ivorian situation is similar. Yamoussoukro is President Houphouet-Boigny's birthplace, and extensive development of the village provided the impetus for making it the capital.
Dodoma was proposed as a capital for Tanganyika as early as 1915 because of its centrality and climate, but, as in Malawi, the cost of a transfer was more than colonial authorities were willing to bear. The socialist ideology of the Nyerere government proved more persuasive. With the expansion of the port to handle both Tanzanian and Zambian cargoes and large-scale migration, pressure on urban facilities in Dar-es-Salaam increased the rate of urban decay. The move to Dodoma was an attempt to reduce urbanization in one part of the country and develop a new major urban node which will contribute substantially to a previously under-serviced rural area. Other than cost, the main problem is an adequate water supply. The new city was designed to encourage contacts between its residential communities and between the city and all parts of the country. The target population was 350,000 by the end of 1999. Both Dodoma and Lilongwe were already moderately sized towns at the time they were chosen, but transformation into a capital city had meant destruction as well as growth to satisfy the planners' goals (Hoyle, 1978(Hoyle, , 1979.
Abuja, on the other hand, is a completely new town, on a site which had very few residents and thus could not be associated with any Nigerian ethnic group.
Oil money made it possible to spend millions of naira to speed the building of Abuja, but the full transfer of the seat of government from Lagos only took place in 1991. The new capital is intended to serve "as symbol of Nigeria's aspiration for unity and greatness" as a central, neutral and healthful place with plenty of room for urban development (Abuja Master Plan, 1979: p. 27 as new towns, dealing with urban poverty, inadequacy of housing and spatial integration.

Adiukwu (2014), in his Prospects and Challenges of Informal Settlements and
Urban Upgrading in Abuja, indicated that, poverty has a social dimension (poor quality of housing and the living environment, i.e. lack of access to basic services like clean water, health care, education etc.). Abuja is one of the most rapidly urbanizing cities in Africa, faced with challenges of squatter settlers.
The shelters are, built by the efforts of the squatters who cannot afford to secure legal or formal land or a safe site on which a house can be built (Obiadi, 2017). Informal land developments provide shelter for over 85% of the population of urban residents in most developing Nations (UNCHS, 1996; Durand-Lasserve, 1997).
The government in Abuja has always confused squatter settlements from the urban poor and as Bello (2009) indicated, the focus has always been on squatter or informal settlements and not on the urban poor, or their inaccessibility of land. This is a wrong approach. This is why when a squatter settlement is redeveloped, what is successfully done is to push the squatters to another location while redistributing their lands among the rich. Squatter settlements develop because there exits some urban poor who desire at least a roof over their heads, but their income and high cost of land have pushed them to where they are, and called home; and where you called, squatter settlements (Bello, 2009 refuse dumps and where they can find one, they encroach on government lands. The emergent settlement usually evolved as a spatial concentration of poor people in the poor areas of the cities. As expected, these settlements are characterized by infrastructure deficiencies, shanty structures, poor sanitation, urban violence and crime (Plate 2). These composition and characteristics have always made squatter settlement a source of worry and concern to the adjacent neighbours and governments (Bello, 2009).
According to an Abuja Development Control Personnel interviewed, "the Abuja Master Plan indicated that Abuja was designed to be developed in four (4) phases. While all the satellite towns including, Gwagwalada, Kubwa, Nyanya, The Abuja Development Control Personnel further indicated that, each of the districts in phases 1 to 3 has the three residential areas (low, middle and high density). Again, they equally have pockets of informal settlements (Obiadi, 2017). Jibril (2006) indicated that, the initial target for movement from Lagos to Abuja was put at the year 1986. So the initial implementation strategy for the Master Plan envisaged that the workers would be housed in the "Accelerated District" within the Phase I Area of the city's development. This "Accelerated District" was to be developed for low-income workers to prevent the emergence of shanty towns in the periphery of the capital city. It was also to serve as a "model" for testing out the detailed plan concepts. The decision to move the date forward from 1986 to 1982/83 lead to the emergence of number of shanty-towns and squatter settlements occupied by workers and the growing service population in such places as Karu/Nyanya, Karmo and Gwagwa. These settlements developed rapidly and were generally unplanned, overcrowded and lacking basic amenities and infrastructure (Jubril citing Mabogunje in Ayileka & Kalgo, 2001).
As indicated by Bello (2009), "the harbinger of squatting activities is inaccessibility of land engendered by low income of the urban poor. The end product is the creation of a slum. The effects of slums have been seen from various perspectives; the commonest one being on the deplorable environmental conditions" (Plate 2). The tenants include, most of the Central City workers who could not afford high rents within Central City. According to Bamidele (2010), "most of the workers who cannot afford to live within the city, find their way to the squatter settlements and uncompleted or abandoned buildings within the city which punctuated all high-brow areas of the city and many" (Plates 2-11). The people, according to Uji and Okonkwo (2007), "frustrated by the inadequacies and failure of the conventional approaches to provide urban shelter and services to a significantly large enough proportion of the poor in the urban areas of the developing nations, these ever-increasing class of urban populations have to resort to squatting on public or private land, either by invading and forcefully occupying or leasing such land (illegally sub-divided) on which they hurriedly construct (through self-help) their shelters from any available materials using any readily affordable and available technology" as is the case in Abuja (2 to 11).
Urban Poverty, according to Adiukwu (2014), citing Copenhagen resolution (2000), "is strongly associated with high levels of environmental risk. This is largely due to poor quality and overcrowded housing conditions and the inadequacies in provision of water, sanitation, drainage, health care, garbage/waste collection, poor percolation resulting into flood, building on waterways and pollution of land, air, and water (Plate 1 and Plate 3). The concentration of more people in urban areas has brought more pressure on the land space for the production of food, infrastructure, housing, and industrialization. The movement affects the capacity of the environment to cope, as each additional person increases the demand on the infrastructure and the natural system and as a result creating ecological imbalance with adverse environmental penalty in hazards and disaster (Daramola & Ibem, 2010).
Almost all the major urban areas in the world are witnessing rural to urban migration resulting in urbanization. Sijuwade (2010)

All the Abuja Government's Housing Programmes Have Failed
• The housing provided by the Abuja government failed because of inadequacy of housing and a good access to the central facilities through a corridor of open spaces and lack of economic connectivity (secondary employment). • The Master Plan was prepared such that land use, infrastructure, housing, transportation, recreation, economic and social services were to be coordinated and inter-related (Olaitan, 2004, citing Abba, 2003, but that was not the case during the implementations.
• Much of our daily experience of the city occurs within the collectively shared public spaces, or the public domain. Not only does the public domain provide for most basic of the city's functions, access, but it also provides for and contains many other functions and activities synonymous with urban life. These are lacking and the problem with Abuja's environmental and urban development.
• Prior to 1973, government activities in public housing had been quite sectional and favored only the working class elites in the society. The poor and low-income were relegated to the background (Olu-Sule, 1988).
• The Abuja government's housing programmes have not worked. The provided Federal Housing units were developed without adequate economic and municipal service facilities as a result, the housing units are not sustainable and also, inadequate for the Abuja steaming population. It equally fails because of the government rush to move government workers from Lagos to Abuja when the government has not provided adequate housing for the workers (Obiadi, 2017). The government's approaches to solving the problems of the urban poor housing issues in Abuja Federal Capital Territory have not yielded a reliable solution; especially in the area of urban spatial distribution being created by the invasion of the formal by the informal urban dwellers; and to start solving them, this paper explored sustainable spatial integration and retention of the urban poor settlement areas that architecturally bridged the gap (spatial solution) between the urban poor settlements (place of abode) and place of work.

Aim of Study
This paper aims to document the problems associated with inappropriate implementation of the Abuja Master Plan that resulted in Abuja urbanization and housing inadequacy and proffer solutions to Abuja housing problems.

Research Methodology
The authors were careful with analytical instrument and tools used. The discip-

Findings
• The Abuja Master Plan was elaborated to put in place, a sustainable urban spatial environment for all groups or classes of activities to be carried out in the Capital Territory. • The Capital City was planned to be built by the Federal Government in its greater part. The Master Plan actually provided for low-income settlements (housing) areas, to be built by the government and to be occupied by the public servants; the private sector servants did not appear to be properly provided for.
• The development plan and process envisaged the seat of power would move from Lagos to Abuja in 1986, but this time of movement was brought forward to 1982/83; hence the commencement of urbanization stampeded. The most vulnerable, the urban poor had to arrange, on their own, where to live in order to stay close to work place and also reduce rent incidence on their income and that resulted in shanty settlements (in both formal and informal housing areas).
According to an Abuja Development Control Personnel interviewed for this paper in 2017, "the Abuja Master Plan indicated that Abuja was designed to be developed in four (4) phases. While all the satellite towns including, Gwagwalada, Kubwa, Nyanya, Karu, Jukwoyi, Chika, Kuchigworo, Pyakassa, Idu, Mpape, Karimu, Gwagwa, Dei-Dei, etc. were designed and zoned for low income families to avoid the sprinkling up of shanty towns at the peripheries. Phases 1 to 4, among other facilities, were designed to have high, middle and low density residential areas. According to him, there is no area in the Master Plan designated for high, middle and low density areas along major corridors although, high desity areas were to be developed closer to the major corridors within walking dis- Jibril (2006) indicated that, the initial target for movement from Lagos to Abuja was put in the year 1986. So the initial implementation strategy for the Master Plan envisaged that the workers would be housed in the "Accelerated District" within the Phase I Area of the city's development. This "Accelerated District" was to be developed for low-income workers to prevent the emergence of shanty towns in the periphery of the capital city. It was also to serve as a "model" It is located at about 40 kilometers from FCC west of the A2-road (Okonkwo, 2006).
Today, the Gwagwalada-Izom road through Paiko is of much significance.
When they are established, it will link the proposed heavy industries of Gwagwalada to Izom's ceramic and mechanized farm projects adjacent to Gwagwalada; currently it diverts some traffic away from the A2-road. The spatial relationship of Gwagwalada with Suleja (though outside FCT) is worthy of note. Suleja's proximity and the early Government policy of encouraging FCT's population movements to Suleja, Gwagwalada and Kwali have helped to stabilize the area (Okonkwo, 2006). 1) The existing village to be allowed to expand into one of the future districts of the new town with its traditional identity.
2) The village to have good access to the central facilities through a corridor of open spaces.
3) The village to be connected to both the residential and the industrial areas of the new town as well as the A2-road. 2) To integrate the existing village with the proposed satellite town and to serve as a base for the development of the satellite town.
All these development goals were not carried out as proposed. The Central City instead, received more immigrants than expected (Okonkwo, 2006).  (Okonkwo, 2006).
Abuja, on the other hand, is a completely new town, on a site which had very few residents and thus could not be associated with any Nigerian ethnic group.
Oil money made it possible to spend millions of naira to speed the building of Abuja, but the full transfer of the seat of government from Lagos only took place in 1992. The new capital is intended to serve "as symbol of Nigeria's aspiration for unity and greatness" as a central, neutral and healthful place with plenty of are grouped into mini-cities of 100,000 -250,000 people with some secondary employment in each. High-density areas are placed closer to the transit corridors than low-density areas, but considerable attention has been given to making all sectors of the city easily accessible by motor vehicles. The first housing built was for 20,000 civil servants. As is inevitable in large-scale government projects, there will be far more segregation of housing by income in Abuja than in most Nigerian cities (ECA, 1980 the areas littered with waste and unkempt (even at the middle of formal housing areas). The majority of the settlements have narrow and overflowing dirty gutters that zigzagged around the make-shift homes (Plates 8-11). They lacked infrastructure, but could be linked up with the surrounding Central City infrastructure. Interview with the residents revealed that they lived there because of nearness to places of work, both formal and informal. The areas however, have no strong economic production base of any sort and many of the residents have been living there for many years and would prefer to continue living there.
The Federal Capital Territory was planned, to be developed in phases and to accommodate the expectant growth and developments. The area demarcated as the FCT is predominantly in Gwariland and falls into one of the very few "buffer" zones. It has displayed a high degree of neutrality between the major northern and southern ethnic groups. The development was planned in such a way that no settlements or people affected would become separated from their "kith and kin" or be rendered "homeless" in the sense that a whole ethnic group may regard themselves "homeless" if their entire land were taken away from them and they were asked to go to settle in lands belonging to other ethnic groups (Okonkwo, 2006). This however, is not the case. A lot of the displaced people of Abuja land found themselves in areas without their "kith and kin" and in most part, rendered "homeless" and living in urban poor settlement areas.
The level of development attention in the Abuja Master's Plan layouts presupposed complete relocation of the villagers to larger villages outside the Capital City; these larger villages formed the basis of the Regional Plan recommendation for development of series of satellite towns to support the Capital City, but that, so far, is not the case. The Central City area is littered with informal settlements in the formal residential areas (Obiadi, 2017citing Okonkwo, 2006 Relocation of the local communities was planned in phases and areas. Hitherto Government, under the Federal Capital Ministry, is yet to achieve its relocation plans. Apart from the fact that relocation meant socioeconomic dislocation of the local communities, especially those who fell within the Capital City growth areas, the incomprehensive implementation of the programmes compounded the problems associated with local communities' adjustment in resettlement sites. First-phase relocation involved some 11,000 people while later relocation from the remaining City site involved between 8500 and 17,000 people.
However, the associated selective relocation program which meant the relocation of only those villages displaced by specific development has been compounded by constant influx of migrants and steady expansion of the settlements.
Nevertheless, while the origin of the problematic situation of the local communities whose settlements fell within the Capital City site could be in the non-implementation of the planned relocation programmes, the problem of those local communities outside the Capital City but within the FCT responds to their seemingly non-inclusion in the spatial economic order which has evolved as a result of the building of the new Capital within their Gwariland (Okonkwo, 2006).
The initial Government Policy of housing development through the FCDA made people to expect too much from Government. Even though it wanted to set the pace and encourage people to move into an area that was hitherto least developed in the country and lacking in the most basics of all social amenities.
After sufficient confidence was built, government did not see the need to continue with that type of development again and so pulled out in 1991 from large scale housing provisions. It did this at a time when the private sector was yet to produce enough housing stock at affordable rate for the ever growing population of the territory. The consequences are of course acute shortages of housing stock within the city and its immediate environs. The only solution was recourse to squatting solution by people mostly not engaged in the formal sector and therefore not entitled to any form of Government housing provisions. To further compound the problems, the few private developers did not build for low income earners-people mostly engaged in the informal sector. Lack of a well-developed Mortgage Institutions did not give much room for private developers to provide enough housing scheme for low income earners hence squatter development in Abuja (Jibril, 2006

Recommendation
The current Abuja settlement patterns (formal and informal) are not integrated in terms of contiguous economic and urban development growth. There is, inexistence, adverse economic inequality and injustice within the Capital City of Abuja and the need for the formal, informal settlements and the Abuja urban actors to be talking, to link the informal and formal settlements together and tie them into the Central City infrastructure.
All over the world, including Nigeria, all the major cities are over populated, faced with inadequate housing, buildings in disrepair, traffic jams, bad roads, pressure on infrastructure, etc. With all these problems, this paper recommends that, connecting to the world class would be farfetched until governments start working on sustainable spatial retention programmes, providing facilities that would create the much needed comfort zones for the people. As indicated in the "Challenges of Abuja" above, all the Abuja government's housing programmes have failed. They failed because of inadequacy of housing and a good access to the central facilities through a corridor of open spaces and lack of economic connectivity (secondary employment). As a result, this paper recommends that, the Abuja government should along with the provision of housing for all, create sustainable job opportunities for the residents. Create opportunities that would economically impact the communities, improve the living conditions of the people by adequacy in infrastructure including, but not limited to, municipal water supply, electricity, affordable city and regional transportation services, security protections, etc. The government needs to be a great motivator by providing the communities with programmes that would rejuvenate hope and confidence in them, economically empower them and emancipate them from adverse hardship.
These could be accomplished through good initiatives, government interventions, cooperative assistance and partnering with the people (privatization).
These are possible and attainable through Sustainable Spatial Housing Design for the Urban Poor in Abuja, where one would live and work within a short distance, partake in the ownership of the community, government offices and industries located within the settlements, tourism facilities, trade show facilities, conference centers and other international attractions, located within the areas.

Conclusion
The city is a fundamental and universal human creation. It is a unique center for social life as well as individual and collective fulfillment. The frantic, irreversible urban growth that societies throughout the world have experienced over the past few decades has caused a transformation of cities and agglomerations, which rarely correspond to inhabitants' legitimate needs, expectations and aspirations (Lerner, 2003). Various current movements in urban design seek to create sustainable urban environments with long-lasting structures, buildings and a great livability for its inhabitants. The most clearly defined form of walkable urbanism is known as the Charter of New Urbanism. It is an approach for successfully reducing environmental impacts by altering the built environment to create and preserve smart cities that support sustainable transport. Residents in compact urban neighborhoods drive fewer miles and have significantly lower environmental impacts across a range of measures compared with those living in sprawling suburbs (Ewing, 2009).
The Abuja urbanization, spatial economic turmoil and urban development disarray resulted from the poor implementation of the Abuja Master and the use of nonprofessionals in the execution of the Master Plan. That resulted in the dualistic and pluralistic architecture of Abuja, Nigeria. The government needs to look into sustainable spatial integration and retention (in their current locations) of the urban poor settlements in line with regional/territorial spatial developments that would accommodate the interest of that segment of the communities, rendering essential services to the rich (highbrow areas of the communities). The form and functionality of the project would more or less, not depend on a particular layout pattern because of the configurations of the existing urban poor neighborhoods in Abuja. To embrace spatial integration of the urban poor neighborhoods in Abuja with the Capital City Area, the growth and functionality, the development would not adopt a particular layout pattern, but would be a Dynamic Polynuclear City System (Clay, 1980) that would embrace a combination of systematic gridiron and unsystematic land subdivisions with attractive features and landmarks (city elements).
The government in Abuja, Nigeria could control Abuja's urbanization, homelessness, population growth and their consequences through the adoption of New Urbanism. A theory promotes smart cities by reducing environmental impacts. The adoption of high rise buildings is encouraging. It is a widely accepted fact that the towers and skyscrapers are advantageous in housing accommodation, in urban areas with high population density and decreases the cost of municipal infrastructure. They accommodate more people per unit of area of land when compared with single family buildings and low rise apartments. The assimilation of urban design principle, dealing with the density of the communities, circulation patterns and expansions, open spaces, parks, decongestions of the communities with the use of high rise buildings and row housing would help in