Bukka was formed in 2003 with the intentions of understanding the built environment in 'non - occidental' societies at both the scale of the city and the building. The word Bukka was chosen as it symbolises an inclusivity which was drawn from the 'everymans' space of the roadside restaurant in Nigeria. Please see FULL TEXT for further details on Panel Discussion: LAGOS - Mega City or Crisis City?
Bukka invites you to a panel discussion on the urban future of Lagos titled;
Lagos ... Mega City or Crisis City?
Present:
Kaye Whiteman [Journalist and Former Editor of West Africa Magazine]
Dr Dayo Mobereola [MD LAMATA*]
Kunle Adeyemi [Offi ce for Metropolitan Architecture]
Simon Gusah [Planning Consultant, Nigeria]
Jaasper Moelker[Urban Detectives - Nederlands]
*Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority
18th of June 2010
1800 - 2000 hrs
(followed by a short drinks reception)
Venue:
Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre
School of Oriental and African Studies [SOAS]
Thornhaugh Street
London
WC1H 0XG
See attached invitation for details
Please register for this event via email; events@bukka.org
http://www.bukka.org/
*UPDATE*
The producers of 'Welcome to Lagos' have informed us that they will be
out of London filming another documentary and send their apologies.
We have therefore invited Jasper Moelker of Urban Detectives in
Nederlands who with a team of students from the Technical University
Delft [Netherlands]recently completed a 2 week urban workshop in Lagos
working with students of the School of Architecture of the University
of Lagos.
Urban Detectives will show a short film of some their studies of Lagos
Urban life.
We await final confirmation from the Lagos State Government
representative - Dr Dayo Mobereola [MD LAMATA] and will update you as
soon as his participation is certain.
If you have registered via email, this update confirms that you are
registered.
Do arrive early as seating will be on a 'first come first served basis'.
The discussion will start promptly at 6pm.
Background to the discussion
This panel discussion will speculate on the urban future of the city
of Lagos in Nigeria. As Nigerias largest city, Lagos holds close to a
10th of the countrys population and accounts for a large proportion
of its economic activity. The management of its growth has preoccupied
the Nigeria state at both tiers of government [Federal and State]
since independence from Britain in 1960. These efforts, widely
acknowledged as being largely insufficient over the past five decades,
have intensified over the last decade since Nigerias transition from
military dictatorship to civilian democracy. In parallel, the city
has attracted the attention of a wide range of international urban
practitioners and thinkers as well as the international print and
electronic media gaining a degree of notoriety for its supposedly
anarchic and extreme urban condition.
The state government sees partnership with the private sector in a
liberalised economic environment as the most efficient way of
attracting the investment to deliver the hard elements of its urban
plans. However overshadowing these grand ambitions is the prevalent
footprint of urban poverty which combined with a prolific and visible
informal economy produces the so called informal urbanism that Lagos
owes aspects of its notoriety to. These polarities, one of a top down
state vision in seeming opposition to a wide spread economic survival
system seem to coexist in an extremely tenuous and fraught
relationship that predates Britains colonial disengagement. The sheer
energy and mass of people located in the city, eking out a living, and
the concentration of companies from the formal economy, often results
in a blurring of the divide through a complex and often symbiotic
relationship which seem to be the glue that binds the city.
Lagos is often viewed as a city in crisis, its urban infrastructure
barely able to support and add meaningfully to the lives of its
citizens. The present state administration led by His Excellency
Babatunde Raji Fashola SAN has embarked on an intensive urban renewal
programme that has tackled head on some of the serious failings of the
city. Often branded as Lagos Mega City, the administrations vision
has caught the imagination of the citizen. This vision strengthened by
a series of initial interventions focussed on tidying up the public
realm and improving urban mobility and its related infrastructure:
road rehabilitation and construction and the provision of viable urban
mass transit systems. Additionally, a series of ambitious new
developments along the eastern Lekki Corridor are planned which
include; Eko Atlantic City, the 4th Mainland Bridge, the Lekki
Masterplan and the Lekki Free Trade Zone. Potentially these proposals
will open up a significant urban area for development, roughly
comparable to a quarter of the current footprint of the city.
If these ambitions are implemented in full, we may witness a
significantly altered city and the creation of a vast urban
agglomeration stretching across Atlantic coastline of Lagos State.
This discussion will touch on representations of these issues; the
states vision, the current urban reality of most of its population,
and look at a proposal for a formal urban intervention in the Lekki
Corridor. These presentations by the panellist will act as a catalyst
and form the focus for a short but intensive discussion on the
pertinent issues of Lagos urban future.
