TITLE:
Challenges of Mega Cities: Lessons for Evolving Sustainable Nigerian Cities
AUTHORS:
Akubue Jideofor Anselm
KEYWORDS:
Urban Development, Megacities, Sustainable Development, Sustainable Cities, Sustainable Urbanism
JOURNAL NAME:
Modern Economy,
Vol.10 No.9,
September
12,
2019
ABSTRACT: The current Millennium Development Goals call for a
re-thinking of city development cooperation as majorly urban. This article
builds upon the lessons learnt from
existing modern day megacities. It dwells
upon the events that were triggered by urbanization leading to the modern day mega
cities and their challenges in the process of evolving more sustainable
structure in the 21st century. The ideas herein are important for
young developing cities in Nigeria where urbanization is already ravaging the
spaces that are left for development as well as generates ideas for existing
megacities like Lagos which ranks in the first 25 largest cities in the world.
Urban development has long suffered diminishing effects due to majorly
unsustainable initiatives and paucity of innovative solutions in planning and
development in Nigeria. Mega cities’ ecological
footprint as well as their socio-economic and
political impact often goes further than comparable medium states.
Megacities, which function with the anchor country concept and understood as
anchor cities in the context of urbanization, possess huge potential for
sustainable regional development, which yet has to be realized and addressed by
Nigeria’s development initiatives. This paper observes the trends and
challenges in modern day Mature and
Transitional mega city development, and highlights ideas which
Nigerian cities can employ to successfully influence sustainable mega urban
development.