I. Lagos, Nigeria

Lagos, Nigeria

Lagos, Nigeria — Tristan Snyder

Lagos is the capita of Nigeria and contains 14,368,000 million people, which is a 3.34%
increase since 2018. The city lies around the Lagos lagoon on the edge of the Gulf of Guinea. The city of Lagos is broken up into 16 Local Government Areas. Victoria island is the financial center of the city with 51 neighborhoods, both formal and informal, extending from the heart North and East.

Left: the Pipistrello lamp for Martinelli Luce (1965). Right: Rimorchiatore, a combined candleholder, vase, light and ashtray (1967.

Population:
Urban: 14,368,000 people (2020)
Metro: 21,000,000 people (2016)

Area:
Urban: 907 sqkm
Metro (Greater Metropolitan Lagos): 1,171.28 sqkm

Population Density:
Urban Average: 14,469 people/sqkm
Metro Average: 7,759 people/sqkm

Politics:
Lagos State has a tripartite power structure (executive, legislative,and judicial). The Lagos State Governor (executive, currently Babajide Sanwo-Olu) is elected directly by the people to serve a single 4 year term. The legislature of Lagos is comprised of 40 congress members elected by the citizens of the states districts.
The judicial branch of Lagos is divided into a magistrates court and a supreme court. Within these two divisions each state has a series of commercial, criminal, family, civil, and land courts that specialize in these topics, but every sub branch reports to an appointed Hon. Chief Judge.

Left: the Pipistrello lamp for Martinelli Luce (1965). Right: Rimorchiatore, a combined candleholder, vase, light and ashtray (1967.

Lagos, Nigeria. High Density Buildig Typologies

Lagos, Nigeria. Means of transportation

Lagos, Nigeria. Traffic hubs and nodes

Lagos, Nigeria. Urban Void Spaces

Lagos, Nigeria- Makoko Neighborhood:

Area: 1.2 square km
Population: 85,840 people
Population Density: 71,533 people/km2

Lagos, Nigeria- Central District:

Area: 3.79 square km
Population: 242,169 people
Population Density: 64,580 people/km2

Lagos, Nigeria- Ajengule Neighborhood :

Area: 2.30 square km
Population: 110,400 people
Population Density: 48,000 people/km2

LEARNING FROM MAKOKO, Lagos & Chicago

“The Venice of Africa”, is an informal settlement rising out of the Lagos Lagoon at the heart of Lagos, Nigeria. This hyper-dense neighborhood is an intricate network of markets, homes, and industry where nearly 200,000 people spend most of their lives. The neighborhood is not formally recognized by the city of Lagos, and has recently undergone strict reclamation measures orchestrated by the local government. The population primarily works in the logging industry that Nigeria has capitalized on with its abundance of tropical forests. This industry is often illegal as people haul logs from government owned land down the Lagoon to shore-side saw mills from which most of the informal homes are constructed.

Makoko is an extremely populous neighborhood in the city only topped by downtown’s Central neighborhood, and the western neighborhood of Ajengule. 2017 estimates put the density at 64,000- 140,000 people/km2, but due to the city’s rapid population growth there could be as many as 150,000 people/km2. The homes are very modest and most importantly serve many different functions. The home in Makoko can be a place to sleep just as easily as it is where fishers fix their nets, people sell their catch or other market goods, or carpenters make build boats for the constant stream of people moving to the neighborhood.

Chicago at nearly 180 degrees is a well developed hyper planned neighborhood trapped in the grid iron of the Midwest. The city, although one of the most dense in the US, pales in comparison to the density of Makoko. With a total population of 2.7 million and an average density of barely 4,600 people/km2, the city struggles to provide adequate affordable public transit to its residents. The city experiences some of the highest property values in the country preventing the possibility of home ownership, and creating a housing shortage. The city is mostly made-up of historic low-rise neighborhoods rarely reaching densities above 50,000 people/km2. These communities are planned and follow strict principles of 20th century modernism that homogenize huge swaths of the city.

I want to see what we can learn from Makoko’s amorphous, heterogeneous, and flexible programs; then I want to apply those principles to create a new neighborhood typology in the city of Chicago.

Chicago Block

— AQQ