Managing Traditional Cities: Understanding Indigenous Building Regulations and Development Control In Nigeria

In addition to working with inappropriate building standards and regulations, the dilemma of managing fast growing cities of developing countries is further exacerbated in their burgeoning traditional settlements that lack any documented standards to guide both the land developers and the planning agencies that are supposed to guide and control sustainable urban development. This work is an assessment and documentation of the inherent development control measures used in guiding structural and urban growth in indigenous cities of Nigeria. In addition to enlisting its advantages over the present adopted building codes influenced by the colonial masters, it also emphasized other areas people-oriented traditional processes and procedures of building regulations can be adapted in confronting present socio-economic and environmental challenges threatening productive living and livelihood opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa including climate change and global warming.

Aliyu M. Kawu is a doctoral student in Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and academic staff in the same Department at Federal University of Technology, Minna, both in Nigeria. His interest is in Urban Management and Infrastructure Finance, Spatial Analysis, Climate Change and Disaster Risk Mitigation.