Hi, I am Town Planner Adeleke Akinpelu. Briefly, I want to discuss on the TOPREC, the just-completed TOPREC professional practice examination for 2025. So, I see some patterns in the questions.

This comment is to serve as a guide to those that are preparing for subsequent examinations for 2026 going forward. I noticed some numbers of things, about three or four, in the 2025 questions.

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FIRST LESSON: The 2025 Exam is more diverse and has more of real-world planning issues

One, I noticed that it seems there is a change in the pattern of the questions. It seems not that direct as it used to be. Then also, the question is more diverse, cut across a wide range of issues. It is based on real-world planning issues, planning challenges. Though, previous years, too, have been in that direction. There has been a mixture in other years. This year, for 2025, I see more of real-world planning issues, and also contemporary issues. Issues that planners have faced in respect of urban development and urban issues.

SECOND LESSON: Candidates should focus more on the content of the syllabus rather than the past questions

Moving forward, based on this, and what I noticed previous years, the way people prepare for the exam is there seems to be this concentration on reviewing the past questions. Though, it is a good idea, too, to review past questions, at least to understand the approach of the examiner.

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What I have learned over time, and also what I could infer from these 2025 questions, I think prospective candidates going forward should focus more on understanding the content of the syllabus, rather than focus on the past questions. I think they should focus more on understanding the content of the syllabus, the subjects, the issues that are discussed in the syllabus. Then also, I also believe prospective candidates should read wide, should understand diverse national, regional, and global planning issues.

So, this will help to broaden their understanding of planning issues. So, whichever way the question comes, whether discussing planning, to discuss planning, planning issues, planning dynamics at national, at local, at regional, and international level, they will be able to approach the question adequately, rather than focus on past questions that often times, like this year, you see that it just seems that the change of pattern did not even follow what they had in the previous year.

So, there was no repetition of past questions that would have said, oh, I studied this past question, now to answer it, so I will apply it to this year’s question. So, I believe that understanding the content of the syllabus, reading wide, understanding national, local, regional, and international planning issues, will make a prospective candidate to be well prepared for the exam. So, in case previous year questions reoccur, and if it doesn’t reoccur, you have the ability to attend the question. So, that is just my own understanding.

THIRD LESSON: Candidate Should Start Exam Preparation Early

Then also, I also need to point to prospective candidates that they don’t need to leave their preparation late, and that’s what I often see in most of the candidates. Though it is understandable because most people are working, so the time might not be there. However, like what they say, what is worth doing is worth doing well.

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So I believe that, going forward, prospective candidates should study preparation for the exam early, get access to the syllabus, get access to reading materials, books, if you have access to audio, if you have access to text, if you have access to video, so prepare early, read to understand, read to understand the content, what planning is all about, what are the issues of planning, how do you address issues of planning, so you need to prepare early, so don’t leave your preparation for exam that is meant for November, don’t leave your preparation for July, don’t leave your preparation for August, don’t leave your preparations for September, so start early as January, February.

So, what I would implore prospective candidates for 2026 TOPREC Professional Practice Examination is start your preparation for the exam early, start around January, start around February, so read to understand, read ahead, so you will not be any under pressure to start attending classes, classes that one might not be able to adequately assimilate the content of that class. So, these are just my pointer towards the TOPREC Professional Practice Examination, so this is a good idea for prospective candidates, for those that intend to take the 2026 examination.

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In this video explanation, I walk you through the 2025 TOPREC Professional Planning Practice Examination questions. You will learn how to identify the core focus of each question and how to understand the direction of each question. I also provide answers/solutions for each question in Section One: Planning Law and Administration and Section Two: Planning Practice questions.

Know someone preparing for the 2026 TOPREC PPP Examination? Help them out by sharing this detailed explanation. Share with colleagues who might benefit.

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Read lesson 2 here: https://smcinsights.substack.com/p/entrepreneurial-opportunities-in-058.

Read lesson 3 here: https://smcinsights.substack.com/p/entrepreneurial-opportunities-in-e0b

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In article one, the entrepreneurship process and entrepreneurial failure were broadly explored. In articles two and three, the nature of urban planning entrepreneurial opportunities was highlighted, and the different tools that could be used to actualise them were discussed. This article (lesson 4) focuses on execution and ties articles 2 and 3 together to help urban planners build a thriving business. This article focuses on the roadmap for executing urban planning entrepreneurial ideas.

4.1 Introduction

Every entrepreneurial idea reaches a point where it must move from intention to implementation. For urban planners, this moment often comes after identifying an opportunity, either for services or products, and validating the need for this service. It should be noted that, beyond identifying a problem, it is necessary to assess whether prospective clients are willing to pay for the service or product. Hence, it is not enough that there is a problem to solve; there must be a market to operate in. Moniepoint noted that “Over 40% of small businesses fail due to no market demand for their products or services”.[i] This pattern of business failure points to a breakdown not just in ideas, but in execution.

For execution to be successful, there is a need for a well-coordinated connection of people, strategy, and operations. A strategy, no matter how brilliant, is worth little if not executed well[ii]. This is where the people come in. Also, the operational process has to be well blended to map out the strategy. The People-Strategy-Operations Framework (See Figure 1) shows three interlinked processes of: People, Strategy, Operations, as the foundation for entrepreneurial idea execution. The STRATEGY dimension focuses on concept validation, market assessment, and pricing; the OPERATIONS dimension focuses on formalising business processes, workflows, and process discipline; and the PEOPLE dimension focuses on team roles, stakeholder/client management, and capacity building. The people, strategy, and operations framework underpins the discussion in this article.

For urban planner interested in the sustainability of their entrepreneurial ideas, well-coordinated execution is essential. It is not enough to identify opportunities, nor is it enough to identify a willing buyer, but how the entrepreneurial idea is executed is important. Execution is where the actual work begins, and where most ventures either stabilise or collapse. Businessday noted that empirical studies confirmed that “80% of businesses under the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) in Africa fail within the first five years of their existence”.[iii] To avoid the failure of your urban planning entrepreneurial ideas, you need a good execution plan that blends people, strategy, and process.

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Urban planning entrepreneurship is unique because it often deals with technical services, regulatory systems, and public-interest outcomes. This means that delivery must balance speed with accuracy, innovation with compliance, and ambition with feasibility. For example, an urban planner might design an innovative waste management system for informal settlements that leverages community cooperatives and mobile payments to ensure prompt payment. But without an adequate legal framework for waste operators to operate within, cooperative organisations’ willingness to participate in the scheme, affordable financing mechanisms for equipment purchase, and enabling mobile payment infrastructure, the implementation of this entrepreneurial idea could fail. The reality in this example makes robust execution processes imperative.

This lesson four focuses on practical urban planning entrepreneurial ideas execution based on the people, strategy, and process framework to enable urban planners to translate their ideas into thriving businesses.

4.2 From Concept to Market: Validating Urban Planning Entrepreneurial Idea

This section reflects the STRATEGY component of the People–Strategy–Operations execution framework in Figure 1. Execution begins with rigorous validation. Validation is simply the process of confirming that an idea has market potential, that clients recognise the service’s value, and that they are willing to engage with or pay for it. In urban planning, where services and products are often highly technical, entrepreneurs sometimes assume that need automatically translates into demand.

However, experience shows that even when people acknowledge a problem, for example, poor land record systems or ineffective traffic management systems, they may not see the value of paying an urban planning professional to solve it, or may lack the funds to do so. In reality, the fact that a city administrator, individuals, or developers struggle with traffic congestion, an outdated land administration system, environmental degradation, or a lack of appropriate physical planning permits for development does not guarantee that they will be willing to pay for the services to resolve the identified problems.

Adequate validation requires direct engagement with potential users to test their interest, willingness to pay, and preferred delivery format. For instance, an urban planner developing a digital property database can speak with estate developers, community associations, and local government physical planning departments to assess whether they would use the system, how frequently, and under what pricing conditions. Similarly, an urban planner offering physical development approval services can gauge developers’ interest and payment (willingness and rate) by analysing physical development approval backlogs at local physical planning offices (using publicly available data or obtaining the data from the local planning office), reviewing competitors’ offerings, or conducting brief interviews with developers, professional builders, and architects.

Validation is not a one-time task. It is continuous, allowing urban planning entrepreneurs to refine their idea, adjust pricing, modify scope, or even redirect the business focus entirely. At this stage, planners must pay close attention to regulatory requirements, licensing conditions, and professional standards, as these can significantly shape how the idea is ultimately developed. Once validation confirms the idea’s viability, the entrepreneur is positioned to formalise operations.

Key components, as discussed in this section, are:

• Assessing market demand, willingness to pay, and user interest.

• Engaging prospective clients through interviews, surveys, and competitor analysis.

• Refining the service concept through continuous feedback, regulatory checks, and pricing adjustments.

4.3 Formalising Operations: Building the Structure for Service and Product Delivery

This section relates to the OPERATIONS side of the execution framework in Figure 1. The successful execution of an entrepreneurial idea depends heavily on the organisational framework that supports it. Formalising operations does not necessarily mean establishing a large company from the start; instead, it means laying the essential foundations that allow the business to function smoothly and credibly. For urban planners, this includes defining the service scope, acquiring necessary tools, setting up administrative systems, and ensuring compliance with statutory requirements. This is the backbone of executing entrepreneurial ideas.

A foundational step is determining the legal structure of the practice, whether to operate as a sole enterprise, a partnership, or a limited liability company. Each structure comes with its own implications for tax, liability, branding, and long-term growth. Once the legal structure is chosen, the planner must also secure relevant professional registrations (e.g., TOPREC in Nigeria), registration with any other relevant bodies, and corporate documentation.

Tools and resources form the next pillar of operational readiness. Planning services frequently require specialised software, reliable data sources, GIS tools, high-quality imagery, or field equipment. Urban planners must also put in place administrative systems for record keeping, project tracking, reporting, and communication. These systems help ensure the business operates efficiently and that clients receive timely, high-quality deliverables.

Standard operating procedures support consistency. A feasibility practice requires workflows for site inspections, market assessments, stakeholder interviews, and forecasting. These systems reduce mistakes and help the business manage increased workload as it grows, and reassure clients as evidence of reliability.

Key components, as discussed in this section, are:

• Having a legal structure and professional registrations (e.g, TOPREC).

• Acquiring essential tools, including GIS software, field equipment, high-resolution imagery, and reliable data sources.

• Developing administrative systems for documentation, communication, invoicing, and reporting.

• Creating standard operating procedures that ensure consistent quality across projects.

4.4 Managing Clients and Stakeholders: Strengthening Relationships for Sustainable Delivery

This section focuses on the PEOPLE dimension of the execution framework in Figure 1. Urban planning thrives on relationships, so urban planning services are relational. Regardless of the service’s technical sophistication, its success often depends on the entrepreneur’s ability to manage relationships with clients, partners, regulators, and community actors. Effective execution, therefore, includes deliberate management of stakeholders through clear communication, responsiveness, and professional transparency. I need to state emphatically that PEOPLE are required to execute plans.

Client management begins with setting expectations. Planners must articulate project timelines, deliverables, and costs with clarity. They should explain the implications of regulatory processes, potential delays, and likely bottlenecks. This level of transparency builds trust and reduces friction. When clients understand what is feasible and what is not, they are more likely to remain satisfied even when challenges arise.

Stakeholder engagement is equally important. Many planning tasks, such as environmental audits, land-use surveys, or community mapping, require cooperation from residents, traditional authorities, government agencies, and other technical professionals. Urban planners who navigate these relationships with respect, patience, and professionalism often deliver more effective and socially acceptable solutions.

In addition, maintaining strong client relationships after project completion can generate repeat business and referrals, both vital for growth. This can take the form of periodic check-ins, sharing new insights, or offering small complementary services that reinforce the planner’s value.

Key components, as discussed in this section, are:

• Setting clear expectations on timelines, deliverables, and project constraints.

• Managing stakeholder relationships through respectful engagement and transparent communication.

• Maintaining long-term client relationships to encourage repeat business and referrals.

4.5 Financial Execution: Managing Resources for Thriving Urban Planning Venture

Financial execution is one of the most critical components of entrepreneurial success. A well-designed service or product can fail if finances are not well-managed and processed. Urban planners, therefore, need a practical understanding of cash flow, pricing, cost control, and the financial implications of project cycles. It is often said that what gets measured gets improved; hence, Peter Drucker noted that, “You can not manage what you do not measure.”

A good starting point is developing a realistic financial plan that outlines expected costs such as software licences, fieldwork expenses, subcontractor fees, and administrative overheads alongside projected revenue. This plan helps the entrepreneur determine appropriate pricing strategies without neglecting the approved professional fee scale. In urban planning services, pricing must balance professional-scale-of-fees guidance with market realities identified during validation and benchmarking.

Managing cash flow is essential because many planning projects have delayed payments, especially in public-sector or donor-funded assignments. Entrepreneurs must therefore budget for periods of slow cash inflow, maintain financial discipline, and avoid overcommitting resources. Efficient invoicing, follow-up systems, and periodic financial reviews strengthen financial sustainability.

For larger or more technology-driven ventures, external finance may be necessary. This may involve loans, grants, partnerships, or investor funding. Planners seeking such support must present credible business models, precise financial projections, and strong operational structures to attract funders. Ultimately, sound financial management gives the enterprise stability and room to grow.

Key components, as discussed in this section, are:

• Developing a realistic financial plan covering software, field logistics, partnerships, and administrative costs.

• Designing pricing models aligned with professional scale-of-fees and market realities.

• Managing cash flow, especially for projects with delayed payment cycles.

• Exploring external finance (loans, grants, investors) for advanced or tech-driven solutions.

4.6 Strengthening Execution: Goals, Routines, Team Roles, and Process Discipline

This section integrates all three execution dimensions: People, Strategy, and Operations. Effective execution depends on clear goals, structured routines, defined roles, and disciplined processes. Focus on important issues and activities. Set SMART and outcome-driven goals that turn ideas into measurable targets. A goal such as securing three paid GIS jobs within six months sharpens focus, highlights resource needs, and guides priorities.

Translate strategy into daily and weekly tasks. Typical actions include mapping approval steps for a physical development permit service, preparing datasets for digital mapping, drafting templates and checklists, and speaking with potential clients each week. These routines maintain momentum and make progress visible. Assign responsibilities to the right people. Urban planning requires GIS technicians, drone operators, data collectors, accountants, and legal advisers. Clear roles support accountability, improve efficiency, and reduce errors.

Design and refine workflows for each service. Review progress weekly or monthly to identify delays and address issues with evidence-based adjustments. Build a culture of follow-through. Honour deadlines and complete commitments to strengthen trust, protect reputation, and prepare the business for larger workloads.

Key components, as discussed in this section, are:

• Setting measurable goals and breaking them into daily and weekly tasks.

• Defining roles and assigning accountability to the right team members.

• Establishing and reviewing workflows to strengthen discipline and follow-through.

4.7 Preparing for Growth: Strengthening Capacity and Scaling with Intention

The success of any urban planning entrepreneurial idea is premised on a balance between People, Strategy, and Operations. Growth is the ultimate aspiration of most entrepreneurs, but unplanned growth can strain operations and degrade the quality of products and services. For urban planning entrepreneurs, preparing for growth means building capabilities that allow the service to expand without compromising standards.

Capacity-building often begins with delegating tasks and bringing in skilled collaborators. If you have the financial capacity or, due to enterprise growth, it becomes necessary, hiring assistants, technicians, surveyors, or subject specialists can free the urban planner to focus on higher-level responsibilities such as business development, client engagement, or strategic planning. Partnerships also play an important role, enabling urban planners to participate in larger projects that require multidisciplinary expertise.

Investing in continuous learning is another way to prepare for growth. Since urban planning increasingly integrates digital technology, sustainability principles, and evolving regulations, planners must regularly update their knowledge. This strengthens their competitive advantage and broadens the range of services they can offer.

Growth also includes strengthening the brand’s visibility through communication, social media, and participation in professional networks. A strong brand makes it easier to access new markets and attract new clients. Ultimately, preparation for growth ensures that when opportunities arise, the enterprise is ready to seize them confidently and effectively.

Key components, as discussed in this section, are:

• Delegating tasks to qualified collaborators.

• Forming partnerships for multidisciplinary projects.

• Investing in continuous learning, especially in digital planning tools.

• Strengthening brand visibility through communication, outreach, and professional networks.

4.8 Conclusion

This lesson four highlights that executing urban planning entrepreneurial ideas is a deliberate process requiring discipline, structure, responsiveness, and adaptive thinking. It emphasises that success depends not merely on the idea itself, but on the systems and processes that bring it to life, which is execution. Execution involves validating the concept, formalising operations, managing clients effectively, maintaining financial discipline, and preparing for growth through continuous improvement and strategic partnerships.

For urban planners committed to entrepreneurial success, execution is the bridge between aspiration and achievement. With a well-structured execution process, urban planning entrepreneurial ideas can move from concept to impact.

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[i] Moniepoint. Small Business Statistics in Nigeria for 2025. https://moniepoint.com/blog/nigeria-small-business-statistics. January 15, 2025.

[ii] Bossidy, Larry, and Ram Charan. Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. New York: Crown Business, 2002.

[iii] BusinessDay Newspaper. 80% of businesses in Africa fail within five years of establishment. https://businessday.ng/uncategorized/article/80-of-businesses-in-africa-fail-within-five-years-of-establishment-report/. July 27, 2022.

Read lesson 2 here: https://smcinsights.substack.com/p/entrepreneurial-opportunities-in-058.

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Lesson Three presents a broad view of tools that urban planners can use in implementing urban planning entrepreneurial ideas. These tools can help identify the market, target the client base, engage in market sizing, and inform market/business expansion, as well as set growth targets and explore growth options to increase practice engagement (job offers). In this article, I discuss core business idea execution tools and outline how to utilise them. My goal is to ensure that urban planners move their ideas from abstract to actualisation, culminating in thriving urban planning business enterprises.

3.1 Introduction

Turning an idea into a functioning urban planning business enterprise requires more than motivation and technical competence; it requires structure, analysis, and a clear strategy for success. If one considers evidence from several examples of businesses founded by technical individuals that have failed across various sectors, it becomes more imperative to ensure that robust business processes are put in place. In urban planning, as with other professions, the successful implementation of entrepreneurial ideas could be ensured through the effective deployment of business idea execution tools that support sound decision-making, effective client engagement, and scalable operations.

In this article, I focused on practical tools urban planners can use to build not just any type of enterprise but viable urban planning enterprises. These tools enable urban planners to answer questions on clients, service offerings, pricing, and market development, among others. Whether you intend to set up as a one-person, small, medium, or large-scale urban planning practice, these tools can help you enhance your practice, attract clients, and grow over time.

I discussed the execution tools of Customer Persona Map, Competitor Benchmarking, Porter’s Five Forces, Business Model Canvas, and Ansoff Matrix from the perspective of the task for which they are used. These include marketing identification and client analysis, market sizing and opportunity assessment, business strategy, and a comprehensive overview of business operations.

3.2 Market Identification and Client Analysis

Every planning service must meet a real need. Yet many planners approach entrepreneurship with a generalised sense of demand: “cities need better plans” or “people need planning advice.” While this is true, these statements are too broad to form the basis of a business. Urban planners must be more specific: Who exactly needs what? What are they struggling with? How are they currently solving the problem? What would make them choose you as the solution to their problem? The first step is to identify your market, not just in terms of geography, but also in terms of client types and their specific problems/issues. In urban planning, potential clients can be grouped into distinct segments, each with its own priorities, budget limits, and expectations.

• Local governments often require layout plans, land use audits, and digital mapping (including street maps) to guide development. They usually lack the in-house technical expertise to deliver these tasks effectively.

• Property developers are concerned with securing planning approvals and meeting regulatory requirements; their core struggles are time and cost, as any delay in approval directly impacts project timelines and finances.

• Business investors require physical development permits and documents related to environmental assessment and operational compliance with sustainability and ESG standards.

• Non-governmental organisations and development agencies often require community data, mapping, and baseline studies.

• Institutions, such as universities, typically seek space planning or environmental audits to enhance functionality, compliance, and long-term efficiency.

Recognising these deeper priorities is essential to capture the problem clients want solved. With a clear understanding of client problems, entrepreneurial urban planners can offer more relevant services, build stronger client relationships, and stand out from competitors who only deliver generic outputs.

Identifying client segments and understanding their core problems are only the first steps. To translate this knowledge into actionable insights, urban planners need tools that enable them to analyse, organise, and respond to client needs in a structured manner. One of the most practical tools for this purpose is the Customer Persona Map, which provides a framework for moving from broad categories of client details to a deeper understanding of clients’ needs and issues.

Execution Tool 1: Customer Persona Map

A customer persona map is a simple yet powerful tool that helps urban planners build a detailed profile of a typical client. While identifying client segments such as local governments, property developers, or NGOs, persona mapping goes further by putting a face to each segment. It requires asking: Who exactly is the client? What are their professional goals? What challenges do they face? How do they express these challenges/issues? How do they currently address these challenges/issues?

For example, instead of simply classifying “local governments” as a segment, a persona map might describe a planning officer in a local government. This officer may aim to improve development control but struggles with outdated maps and limited staff capacity. Similarly, a persona for a property developer may reveal a focus on reducing approval timelines, keeping costs low, and avoiding regulatory disputes. By creating 3–5 detailed personas, urban planners can transition from generic assumptions to tailored strategies that directly address the daily realities of clients. This sharpens marketing pitches and client communication.

Table 1 presents a transition from the high-level segment (e.g., “Local Governments” and “Property Developer”) to a detailed, actionable profile of clients, outlining how an urban planning firm or individual urban planning consultant service can be specifically tailored to address the realities and issues of prospective clients.

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3.3 Market Sizing and Opportunity Assessment

Knowing your potential market is not just about identifying clients; it is about estimating how many of them exist, how often they need your service, and how much they are willing to pay. This is what market sizing helps you understand. Without it, urban planning entrepreneurs risk undercharging, chasing low-yield opportunities, or entering markets too small to sustain a viable practice.

Market sizing allows you to answer three critical business questions: Is this opportunity big enough to support my business? What portion of the market can I realistically serve? How should I structure my services and pricing to optimise them? This analysis is fundamental if you plan to invest in staff, equipment, or partnerships. A well-defined market size can guide the scale of your ambition, the clients you prioritise, and the level of resources you commit.

Selecting the right tool is essential for translating broad market insights into concrete business opportunities. Competitor benchmarking provides urban planners with a practical, evidence-based approach for estimating demand and identifying service gaps.

Execution Tool 2: Competitor Benchmarking

One of the most effective ways to estimate market size in urban planning consultancy is through competitor benchmarking. This method involves examining the activities, clients, and pricing strategies of other firms or consultants already operating in your field. Rather than relying solely on speculations, benchmarking provides evidence from actual practice, which gives a more reliable sense of demand and revenue potential. Competitor benchmarking can be applied through the following steps:

• Identify direct and indirect competitors. Consider consulting firms, freelance planners, or architecture and engineering firms that offer overlapping services, such as permit processing, layout design, or GIS mapping.

• Analyse their client portfolio. Assess the number and type of projects they undertake annually. For example, if three firms in Lagos each process 15–20 planning permits a year, that suggests a consistent annual demand of at least 50–60 permits in that market.

• Study their service mix and pricing. If competitors are charging between X amount for specific urban planning services, this range provides a realistic benchmark for your own pricing structure. Also, you may refer to the approved scale of fees for a guide in addition to the competitor pricing assessment.

• Evaluate their positioning. Determine whether they serve premium clients, such as large developers, or lower-budget clients. This reveals where the demand is concentrated and where gaps may exist.

Benchmarking also highlights underserved opportunities. For instance, if most firms focus heavily on property developers, there may be space for a planner who specialises in NGOs, and other industries requiring services as sustainability services, climate change services, mapping services, or data collation services, among others.

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3.4 Business Strategy

A common mistake among entrepreneurial-inclined urban planners is to assume that once a service is needed, it will automatically succeed. But even a necessary service can struggle in a crowded or volatile market. This is why market opportunity must be matched with strategic positioning. Michael Porter’s Five Forces framework is a practical tool that helps assess the competitive landscape and make better-informed decisions about where and how to compete. Choosing the right business strategy is critical to ensuring that services are not only relevant but also competitive.

Execution Tool 3: Porter’s Five Forces

Porter’s Five Forces stands out as a reliable framework for evaluating a business sector's competitive environment (See Figure 1). It helps urban planners look beyond client demand and examine the broader forces that shape the profitability and long-term survival of the urban planning services delivery industry.

A typical process of Porter’s Five Forces in the urban planning service delivery industry is presented as follows:

1. The first force is the threat of new entrants, which considers how easily others can enter the urban planning service delivery market and offer the same services. In planning, certification from required regulatory bodies (e.g., TOPREC, RTPI, APA) is required for individuals and firms to practice. However, the barriers to entry are still relatively low, as a registered urban planner with basic training, software, and a laptop can provide services such as site analysis, layout design, or advocacy report writing. This means competitors can emerge quickly, often undercutting prices, though the professional scale of fees is expected to guide pricing/professional fees.

2. The second force is the bargaining power of buyers, specifically clients. Public sector agencies and donor-funded organisations often hold strong influence because they control budgets and use competitive bidding, leaving little room for flexible pricing. Private developers and estate associations may be more flexible but tend to be price-sensitive.

3. The third force is the bargaining power of suppliers. Urban planners often rely on external inputs such as drone operators, satellite imagery providers, or licensed software like ArcGIS. A heavy dependence on a single supplier creates vulnerability to cost increases or service delays.

4. The fourth force is the threat of substitutes, which examines whether clients can solve their problems in other ways. In many cases, architects, engineers, or unregistered technicians may take on planning-related tasks. Some organisations also rely on in-house staff instead of outsourcing to professionals.

5. The fifth force is industry rivalry, which reflects the level of competition among planning service providers. Rivalry is often intense in large cities where many planners compete for similar projects, leading to downward pressure on fees. In smaller cities, the number of providers may be fewer, but competition remains sharp.

Table 2 presents a comprehensive overview of the urban planning services delivery industry's features, based on the Five Forces, and countermeasures to address the challenges derived from each force.

3.5 Comprehensive Overview of Business Operations

A well-designed service is worthless if the underlying business model is flawed. Many business ideas/ventures fail not because of a lack of skill, but because the founder cannot clearly articulate how value is created, delivered, and sustained. This is where the Business Model Canvas becomes important.

The Business Model Canvas is a practical one-page framework that helps urban planners structure the core components of their business. It gives a clear visual map of how the practice will work and brings clarity to the actualisation of business ideas.

Execution Tool 4: Business Model Canvas

The Business Model Canvas (BMC) provides a structured yet flexible framework for describing how your planning practice creates, delivers, and captures value. The canvas offers a clear, one-page view of the critical components of a business enterprise. For entrepreneurial planners, this is particularly useful because it forces you to consider not only the technical services you deliver, but also the financial and organisational systems that sustain your work. The BMC consists of nine interconnected building blocks, each addressing a fundamental question about your business (see Table 3).

1. Value Proposition defines the exact problem you are solving for clients and the benefit they gain from engaging you as an urban planning consultant. For example, you might position your service as helping developers secure planning permits quickly, providing reliable spatial data in informal settlements, or designing affordable flood adaptation strategies for coastal communities. A strong value proposition must always focus on the client’s outcome, not just the planner’s technical output.

2. Customer Segments specify the client(s) you intend to serve. It is not enough to say “anyone who needs planning.” A viable business model identifies specific client categories, such as mid-sized developers in a particular location or NGOs involved in upgrading projects. Each segment may require a distinct style of service or communication approach.

3. Channels explain how you intend to reach and deliver services to clients. These can range from direct methods, such as phone calls and emails, to more formal avenues, including proposals and competitive tenders. Digital platforms such as project portals or dashboards for data delivery may also serve as channels, particularly for planners offering GIS or mapping services. Understanding channels helps you decide where to invest in outreach and how to streamline service delivery.

4. Customer Relationships refer to the type of interaction clients expect once they engage your service. Some clients may prefer one-off, transactional relationships, while others may want long-term support or participatory involvement in the planning process. Others might prefer a self-service approach, such as downloadable templates or automated reports. Designing your operations around these expectations increases satisfaction and builds loyalty.

5. Revenue Streams outlines how your practice generates income. In planning, common models include project-based fees, monthly retainers, licensing of data or dashboards, and training services. Choosing the right mix requires balancing market realities with the value you create, ensuring that your pricing remains competitive yet sustainable.

6. Key Resources are the assets without which your service cannot function. They often include technical tools such as GIS software, drones, or reliable internet access, as well as human resources like planning technicians, personal assistants, and data analysts. Access to relevant data, professional networks, and even office infrastructure can also be critical. Being clear about resources helps avoid overspending and ensures you can scale responsibly.

7. Key Activities defines the tasks you must perform to deliver value. These may involve site visits, data analysis, stakeholder engagement, mapping, or preparing reports and presentations. By specifying these activities, you can focus on what drives value rather than dispersing energy on peripheral tasks.

8. Key Partnerships focuses on those you need to work with to deliver value to the client. Partnerships with surveyors, drone operators, legal advisers, or printing firms can expand your capacity without the overhead of hiring full-time staff. Strategic collaborations also allow you to access specialised knowledge or tools, making your service more competitive and adaptable.

9. Cost Structure captures the expenses involved in sustaining your business. These may include software licences, fieldwork costs, professional fees for subcontractors, marketing, and equipment. Analysing your cost structure ensures that your pricing strategy aligns with financial reality, reducing the risk of running at a loss.

Together, these nine building blocks provide a holistic view of your planning practice. By filling in the Business Model Canvas, you gain a practical tool for diagnosing weaknesses, spotting opportunities, and aligning your services with both client needs and financial sustainability. It transforms abstract business ideas into a clear operational strategy, allowing you to focus on execution rather than guesswork.

See Table 4 for a typical business model canvas for an urban planning firm

3.6 Growth Planning

Growth in any business enterprise should be intentional and strategic, not simply a matter of taking on more work. The primary objective of business growth planning for any organisation is to undertake the right kind of work with the right clients under optimal conditions. Without a clear plan, growth can quickly lead to overextension, inconsistent quality, dissatisfied clients, and ultimately, a loss of direction. For entrepreneurial urban planners, growth must therefore be guided by a framework that balances ambition with capacity, ensuring that expansion strengthens the practice rather than weakens it.

By examining various growth paths, supported by established tools such as the Ansoff Matrix, urban planners can make informed decisions about when and how to scale their urban planning consultancy. Growth for an urban planning firm or solo urban planning consultant can take several forms, including:

• Service Expansion: One of the most straightforward approaches is to broaden your service portfolio. This means adding related services that complement your current offer. For example, a planner who specialises in site layout plans may expand into supporting permit applications, conducting GIS analysis, or performing environmental audits. This type of growth works best when the services naturally align, allowing expertise, tools, and processes to be shared across them. The key is to expand only when you can maintain quality and deliver projects on time.

• Geographic Expansion: Another strategy is to extend operations into new locations. A firm established in Lagos, for instance, may branch into nearby markets such as Oyo, Kwara, or Ondo State. This scenario is also applicable to urban planners in other countries, where they can extend their operations into new locations. The same types of clients, such as estate developers, local government authorities, or NGOs, can be served in these new regions. Successful geographic expansion often relies on existing professional or personal networks; attempting to expand into an unfamiliar new location without connections can increase risk and make the market harder to penetrate.

• Sector Diversification: Sector diversification involves maintaining your core services while offering them to different types of clients. For example, a consultancy that initially works with private developers could extend its services to NGOs, universities, or public institutions. This approach provides a safeguard against sector-specific slowdowns. If private developers reduce activity during an economic slowdown, income from other sector projects can help stabilise the business.

• Partnership-Based Growth: Partnerships provide a flexible and often low-risk path to growth. By collaborating with professionals who bring complementary expertise, such as architects, surveyors, engineers, or data analysts, planners can expand their service offerings and compete for larger projects. Partnerships also enable the sharing of resources and the reduction of overhead costs. The most effective collaborations are those in which roles are clearly defined, credit is shared openly, and trust is established over time.

Execution Tool 5: Growth Planning with Ansoff Matrix

A helpful way to assess growth options is through the Ansoff Matrix, a framework that matches service and market combinations to four distinct strategies:

For example, consider a planner providing advisory services for planning permits:

• Product Development: Offer a GIS training course to existing clients, generating an additional revenue stream without altering your market.

• Market Development: Offer the same advisory service to clients outside the base location, tapping into new geographic markets.

By situating your current and potential activities within this framework, you can identify opportunities that align with your resources and avoid moves that exceed your capacity. The Ansoff Matrix ensures that growth remains deliberate and sustainable. Growth is not only about winning new contracts or entering new markets; it is also about expanding existing ones.

3.7 Conclusion

I offered a structured guide for transforming urban planning ideas into sustainable businesses, focusing on execution tools that support clarity, strategy, and growth. I emphasised the need for urban planners to move beyond broad assumptions of demand and instead identify specific client segments, understand their deeper problems, and tailor services accordingly. Through Customer Persona Map urban planners can refine client analysis and with Competitor Benchmarking urban planners can engage in evidence-based approaches to market sizing.

Porter’s Five Forces helps assess the competitiveness of the urban planning services delivery industry, while the Business Model Canvas provides a broad view of the business, ensuring strategic value creation. Growth planning is presented as a deliberate process, guided by the Ansoff Matrix, to expand services, enter new markets, diversify client bases, and build sustainable partnerships. Collectively, these tools equip urban planners with an entrepreneurial mindset with practical strategies to identify business opportunities, strengthen competitiveness, and scale their urban planning enterprise.

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You can come up with the best development plan (master plan, regional plan, model city plan, urban plan) and other urban planning initiatives, but if inflation increases, interest rates rise, tax payments decrease, and GDP growth slows down, these factors will reduce government sources of revenue, making it challenging to provide funds for development plan provisions. The success of urban planning initiatives is dependent on several factors, principal among these is macroeconomic and microeconomic dynamics and interplay.

Economic dynamics and interplay shape every planning decision, yet they are often overlooked. Land use choices, transport investments, zoning regulations, and housing policies all carry costs and trade-offs that influence whether a city thrives or struggles. A transport corridor, for instance, is more than mobility; it unlocks land value, drives housing demand, and affects business competitiveness. Affordable housing policies, meanwhile, cannot succeed without understanding the interplay of supply, demand, and incentives in the property market.

It should be noted that economics is a significant underlying factor in the success of urban planning activities. For instance, a weak currency, double-digit inflation, and high borrowing costs will dictate how many roads are built, whether housing estates are completed, and whether development plans (regional plan, master plans, urban plans, etc) can be fully implemented. This is because the state of the economy dictates the availability of funds for the actualisation of development plan goals.

Urban planning students at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels study “urban economics” and “economics in planning” in school, but usually this is often at the surface level. Most know economic vocabulary, but not the fundamental economic principles and their implications on urban planning practice.

In this article, I make the case for full integration of economic thinking in urban planning activities. My focus is on why urban planners must weave diverse economic fundamentals and principles into urban planning practice to ensure that planning reports and plans do not gather dust on the shelves. In the following sections, I discussed macroeconomic, microeconomic, and urban planning decisions and implications.

2.0 Economic Realities and Urban Development Implications

Macroeconomic factors focus on broader economic realities, while microeconomic factors are at the level of the household; both have diverse impacts on government and household expenditure, with resultant implications for urban planning activities and decisions. Ignoring either produces physical development plans that look good on paper but are difficult to implement due to a paucity of funds or a mismatch of needs.

2.1 Macroeconomic factors

Urban planning does not take place in isolation but within the context of macroeconomic factors. Macroeconomic factors, including inflation, interest rates, fiscal deficits, trade flows, and exchange rates, shape government spending and development financing costs. Macroeconomics determines whether there will be enough funds to finance public infrastructure and the execution of different provisions with a given development plan.

When inflation surges, central banks often raise interest rates to curb inflation, which makes it more expensive for governments and developers to source funds for development initiatives. Also, fiscal deficits and a volatile national currency (for example, the naira) often erode confidence, as a weak currency makes imported materials more expensive, thereby inflating project budgets. Inflation and exchange-rate shocks are among the major drivers of development initiatives’ abandonment, which undermines sustainable development goals achievement and also impedes the attainment of town planning goals of functional settlement fit for working, living, and recreating.

For urban planners, understanding these macroeconomic realities, their dynamics, and how to consider them in their planning process is important. It is the foundation for realistic and resilient urban planning and development.

2.2 Microeconomic Factors

Microeconomic dynamics operate closer to households and neighbourhoods, influencing land and housing prices, consumption patterns, small business survival, and the costs of labour and materials. Microeconomic factors reveal what households can afford and where demand lies.

Household spending patterns matter. Inflation erodes disposable incomes, reshaping how families live and move. For instance, after Nigeria’s government removed the fuel subsidy in 2023, transport costs surged, forcing households to cut back on other expenses. Travel behaviour changed, public transport demand rose, and urban mobility needs changed, with households prioritising travel needs. Therefore, urban planners who assume a stable and prosperous middle class risk designing cities that no longer match household economic realities. In this regard, subsequent development initiatives are expected to give adequate consideration to public transport infrastructure and provision options for a multimodal transport system.

In global cities, land prices rise far faster than most household incomes. Land speculation and land use encroachment often lead to commercial land use activities pushing land acquisition beyond the reach of middle-class households, resulting in the emergence of informal housing and settlements. For instance, high- or medium-density residential zones could be located in the direction of a commercial development zone's growth. Eventually, the high- and medium-income residential areas could be priced out by the outward spread of the commercial development. When setting zoning arrangements, density parameters, and other standards, urban planners must consider this scenario and provide adequate countermeasures.

In Nigeria’s cities, as with other African cities, there is a high dependence on the informal economy for job opportunities, services, and product delivery. Without an adequate understanding of this economic sector’s contribution to the larger economic framework, urban planners may prioritise formal sector growth in development plans while neglecting the economic sector spaces where most residents actually work. This results in unregulated informal sector development, which impacts negatively on the overall goals of the development plan.

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3.0 Cases of Economic Thinking in Urban Planning

These are Africa and international experience on economic thinking integration in urban planning that produce resilient outcomes and implementable development plans. These are cases where urban planners consider prevailing macroeconomic realities and household economic dimensions; hence, urban planning activities are not conducted in oblivion of macro and microeconomic dynamics.

In Nairobi’s Kibera, upgrading projects used flexible interior layouts and community participation to keep costs manageable and outcomes relevant¹. Flood adaptation efforts in the same area combined technical expertise with local knowledge, delivering cheaper and more sustainable solutions². In Kwale County, researchers found that settlement patterns and proximity to services significantly influenced the project’s success³.

In Portland, the United States, long-term economic thinking is applied to growth management. Land-use regulation, transport investment, and environmental protection were treated as interconnected, with costs, benefits, and trade-offs. This approach maintained the quality of life while managing expansion⁴. In the United States more broadly, monetary policy illustrates how macroeconomic cycles influence urban development. When the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, the cost of borrowing climbs, reducing housing demand, slowing construction, and putting downward pressure on home prices. The IMF (2024) reports that tighter monetary policy reduces house prices by about 3 percent and building permits by 1 percent within two years⁵, while the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (2023) shows that prices can fall within weeks of an unexpected rate hike⁶. Although planners do not directly adjust zoning in response, they must contend with affordability and supply pressures generated by these cycles, which influence the evolution of local housing and zoning strategies (Urban Institute, 2022)⁷.

In Curitiba, Brazil, the bus rapid transit system is linked with zoning to encourage higher-density development along transport corridors. This reduced commuting costs, raised land values, and supported industrial growth. The result was a sharp rise in per capita income, demonstrating how aligning mobility and land use with economic strategy can deliver lasting benefits⁴. In Porto Alegre, it is shown that participation and economics can reinforce each other. Its participatory budgeting model directed funds to essential services such as sanitation and drainage, reducing infant mortality and improving welfare. By linking citizen input with efficient resource allocation, the city demonstrated how planning can achieve both equity and economic effectiveness when trade-offs are openly assessed⁴.

These cases show that economic thinking is indispensable to effective urban planning, as resilience, affordability, and an implementable development plan are achieved by incorporating economic factors into planning. The next step focuses on how economic thinking can be incorporated into urban planning activities.

4.0 Applying Economic Thinking in Urban Planning

In the development planning process, when urban planners apply economic thinking, planning actions are grounded in realities, and their plans can survive volatile economic conditions because both macroeconomic and microeconomic factors have been well considered.

Consideration of economic realities ensures urban planning agencies streamline approval processes, address land acquisition processing fees, development permit fees, and multiple levies that accumulate across various agencies. To address household mobility challenges resulting from the prevailing economic situation, there should be a prioritisation of multimodal transport systems that integrate buses, rail, and non-motorised options, linking them with land-use planning. Transport corridors can be aligned with mixed-use development, reducing commuting distances and unlocking land value.

Speculative land markets, insecure tenure, and land use encroachment often impede orderly urban development. Ignoring these dynamics means plans might look coherent on paper, but not implementable. Urban planners should prepare development plans and engage in development control activities, taking cognisance of various economic factors, such as inflation, exchange rates, interest rates, capital market operations, and gross domestic product growth, among others.

Urban planners must treat economics as central to their practice to ensure that development plans align with prevailing economic realities and ensure that proposals can be matched with appropriate funding. It is not economically wise to develop a plan provision without considering the source of funding, as well as the potential impact of prevailing and possible changes in macroeconomic and microeconomic dynamics on the source of funding.

5.0 Conclusion

Urban planning cannot ignore economic fundamentals. Inflation, exchange-rate fluctuations, household budgets, GDP growth, and investment flows shape every decision on housing, transport, land use, and infrastructure. A development plan (regional plan, urban plan, model city plan, master plan) that overlooks these economic factors is likely to face a series of implementation challenges.

It is important that urban planners, particularly in Nigeria and Africa, move beyond purely technical approaches and integrate economic factors into their planning analysis and decision-making processes. International experience shows that economic principles integration sharpens urban planning practice and decision-making by clarifying costs and benefits, highlighting trade-offs, and exposing distributional impacts.

The lessons from Curitiba, Porto Alegre, and Portland demonstrated that consideration of economic factors and tools can strengthen urban planning outcomes. It is shown that incorporating economics into the urban planning process results in implementable development plans that facilitate the achievement of resilient, equitable, and affordable settlement living, among other benefits.

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NOTES

1. UN-Habitat, “Participatory Slum Upgrading in Kibera,” 2022.

2. Karanja, F., “Community-Based Flood Adaptation in Nairobi,” African Journal of Environmental Science, 2021.

3. Mwangi, S., “Urban Settlement Patterns and Service Delivery in Kenya,” Development Studies Review, 2020.

4. Schwartz, H. “Incorporating more economics into urban planning,” Journal of Urban Regeneration and Renewal, Henry Stewart Publications, 8(3), 280-300, 2015.

5. International Monetary Fund. “The Housing Supply Channel of Monetary Policy”. IMF Working Paper WP/24/23, 2024.

6. Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, “House Prices Respond Promptly to Monetary Policy Surprises.” FRBSF Economic Letter. 2023.

7. Urban Institute. Six Ways Rising Interest Rates Will Affect Housing and Mortgage Markets. 2022.

2.1 Introduction

Urban and regional planning is transforming into a dynamic field for entrepreneurial opportunities, making an entrepreneurial mindset imperative, especially given the high level of unemployment in Nigeria and globally due to prevailing economic challenges. In specific reference to Nigeria, the traditional career path of public sector employment still exists, but is no longer sustainable considering the high turnout of urban planners vis-à-vis the low intake of the public sector. I firmly believe it is time for urban planners to be directed towards the diverse opportunities outside the public sector to ensure the urban planning professional practice thrives in Nigeria, as in the case of other countries like the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

Three significant factors are reshaping the role of urban planners in Nigeria and globally. The first is the increasing complexity of urban problems such as unregulated development, housing deficits, traffic congestion, climate-related risks, and failing infrastructure. These issues demand timely and practical solutions that public institutions often cannot provide. The second factor is the rise of digital tools like drone imaging, mobile data collection, and GIS platforms. These technologies enable planners to work independently, whether as a solo consultant or a boutique firm, and provide cost-effective services. The third is the global shift towards sustainability and climate resilience issues, which has created new niches such as green infrastructure, energy-efficient housing, smart mobility, and smart cities, an area where urban planners in Nigeria need to explore significantly.

To address the global shift in urban planning practice and foster an entrepreneurial mindset, MIT School of Architecture and Planning, for example, offers a dedicated short course in urban entrepreneurship, designed to help professionals develop ventures around pressing built environment challenges. In Nigeria, this transformation presents a significant opportunity, considering that urban planning professional practice has historically struggled with underfunding, limited visibility, slow career progression, and opportunities to diversify into different areas beyond the traditional model. There is an opportunity to use digital tools to explore various aspects of urban planning for innovative practice. Entrepreneurial opportunities in traditional and contemporary urban planning are explored in the following two sections.

2.2 Entrepreneurial Opportunities in Traditional Urban Planning

There are areas of urban planning that have long shaped the physical and social organisation of cities and regions from time immemorial. These areas also provide a platform for urban planners to explore their entrepreneurial mindset, providing services that adequately address urban and rural development needs. For planners willing to innovate, repackage, or specialise, these traditional planning domain also presents specific market needs that can be met through innovative private practice consultancy and service-based ventures.

2.2.1 Land Use Planning, Development Control and Regulatory Services

The broader land use planning and development control offers a wide range of entrepreneurial opportunities for urban planners. Across Nigeria’s urban centres, including semi-urban areas, there is an increasing demand for development that requires detailed site analysis at the micro or macro level, layout preparation, physical planning permit, physical develooment monitoring and general land use planning advisory services such as building permit approval process and client representation for different planning applications with various regulatory agencies, among other opportunities.

Formal and informal developers often struggle to access appropriate land use data that comprises several variables crucial for their development investment decision-making. Urban planners can fill this gap by offering services on the provision of these data through a robust urban development database. Also, urban planners can provide land use audit services to communities and provide consultancy for land titling and regularisation. In addition, urban planners can offer physical planning permit advisory services by compiling, submitting, and monitoring physical development documents on behalf of their clients and preparing physical development justification reports, among others. To render these services, urban planners need proper knowledge of local physical planning regulations and requirements. These services can form the foundation of a reliable and scalable planning business.

2.2.2 Housing and Settlement Planning

The quest for decent, quality, and affordable housing is universal. Housing remains one of Nigeria’s most pressing urban development challenges in terms of provision and investment decisions. There are diverse opportunities in the housing sector in Nigeria, with a deficit of millions and a growing informal housing market. There is considerable demand for expertise to address issues around housing development. Urban planners, whether as individuals, boutique firms, or large firms, can position themselves as service providers in areas such as housing needs surveys, housing information database providers like what is obtainable in the financial sector, in this instance developers pays for information either through subscription or pay as you use basis and community housing profiling, among other services.

2.2.3 Transport and Mobility Planning

As Nigerian cities expand, mobility challenges intensify. The informal transport sector dominates, yet few cities have current data on travel patterns, safety risks, or public transport gaps. This gap creates entrepreneurial opportunities for urban planners in transport planning consultancies that can conduct traffic surveys, offer route optimisation, route design, and map out non-motorised transport routes. These services can be provided using a plethora of digital tools, including both free and paid software, available online or offline. With these digital tools, urban planners can establish a one-person consultancy, a boutique firm, a mid-size firm, or a large firm comprising urban planners with a shared entrepreneurial mindset. Urban planners can gather data, provide recommendations, and support transport development for various clients.

2.2.4 Impact Assessment

There is a diverse range of impact assessments, including social, health, economic, environmental, and cultural, among others. However, urban planners are mostly conversant with environmental impact assessment due to its demand as part of documentation for development permits by urban planning regulations. Environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) services remain in high demand due to statutory requirements for new developments, such as the ESIA of the Fourth Mainland Bridge, Lagos, and the ESIA of the Proposed Oshodi Transport Interchange Project, Lagos, among others. Urban planners could form a consortium for such a project or work as a solo consultant to provide detailed data and data analysis services for the firm in charge of the ESIA project. Also, urban planners can offer environmental audits and environmental compliance checks for public and private clients.

2.2.5 GIS and Spatial Data Services

With the increased interest in artificial intelligence and its associated services, there is increased demand for spatial data across the government, private sector, and civil society. With a combination of GIS knowledge, software (offline and online), and computing hardware, urban planners can explore opportunities in GIS and spatial data services delivery in areas of mapping, site surveys, land use visualisation, and dashboard development. Urban planners can also offer GIS training, customised spatial analysis, and client-specific mapping services. This niche is more open to urban planners due to the availability of free access to open-source tools like QGIS, as well as affordable and sometimes free online tools for generating spatial products and conducting analysis.

2.3 Entrepreneurial Opportunities in Contemporary Urban Planning

As global development challenges evolve, urban planning professionals must also evolve to provide adequate solutions. Issues like climate change, environmental sustainability, and digital transformation have redefined what it means to plan for cities and regions far away from the old order. These shifts are creating an entirely new type of practice, services, and products, open to urban planners with an entrepreneurial mindset. Unlike traditional planning fields, these emerging areas are less saturated and often less understood by traditional focused urban planning firms and urban planners would had not broaden their knowledge base on contemporary urban planning issues. This makes contemporary urban planning practice an ideal ground for urban planners willing to innovate. It presents a blue ocean opportunity for urban planners to participate in a less saturated urban planning marketplace.

2.3.1 Sustainability and Climate Change

Climate change is no longer a future threat; it is a present crisis. Nigerian cities face rising temperatures, unpredictable rainfall, and frequent flooding; however, considering the prevailing situation, it is clear that concerned agencies and stakeholders lack adequate knowledge of the phenomenon beyond the buzz online and social media and are unprepared. This lack of sufficient expertise has created opportunities for practical services that assess climate risk, plan adaptation measures, and align development with mitigation goals.

Urban planners can provide carbon footprint audits for private organisations, particularly those under an obligation to comply with sustainability requirements and reporting. These audits involve spatial and technical assessments of emission sources and can lead to follow-up services like mitigation plans and strategies. There is also growing demand for community-scale climate action plans, documents that outline how specific neighbourhoods can reduce risk, conserve energy, or adapt infrastructure. Local and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and international development agencies working in urban resilience often need such plans. Urban planners can explore these fields as solo consultants, boutique firms, and mid-sized firms, among other levels of practice entities.

2.3.2 Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) is no longer a buzzword; it is a requirement. Public sector regulatory agencies and stakeholders increasingly expect planning projects, economic activities, and investment projects to demonstrate environmental responsibility, resource efficiency, and social inclusion. Environmental, social, and governance ESG helps to define and assess the impacts of businesses and companies on environmental, social, and governance issues (see image below). ESG also provides the framework to enable business executives and regulatory agencies to understand how organisations are managing risks and opportunities related to environmental, social, and governance criteria (sometimes called ESG factors). ESG takes the holistic view that sustainability extends beyond just environmental issues.

Sustainability, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) frameworks are opening new frontiers for urban planners. As cities face increasing pressure to meet climate goals, reduce social inequality, and ensure transparency in development, ESG services are becoming essential. These services are in demand from private estate developers, business investors, cooperatives, NGOs, and public agencies seeking to attract investment or meet international funding criteria. Urban planners can provide services such as ESG audits, sustainability assessments, and ESG advisory to align clients’ projects with environmental benchmarks, helping companies meet environmental and planning-related components of ESG criteria to fulfil regulatory requirements, prepare ESG reports, and implement a resource-efficient infrastructure development plan.

Also, urban planners can provide services in waste management, biodiversity impacts, and water efficiency through the lens of planning and spatial design. Another service is preparing sustainability reporting frameworks. These reports consolidate information on how a development or urban initiative can meet sustainability goals and related regulatory requirements. It should be noted that the interdisciplinary nature of ESG services delivery often requires a multifaceted skill set and qualifications. Urban planners can work with other professionals to provide ESG services. As ESG requirements become embedded in investment decisions, urban planners can develop services that position clients to qualify for green bonds, climate finance, or donor-backed urban development projects. This includes preparing environmental and social impact statements, ESG-compliant layout plans, and risk assessments. Solo urban planning consultants and small urban planning consultancies can specialise in these services and pitch them to clients who cannot afford the services of firms such as McKinsey, PwC, BCG, Deloitte, among others, but need credible ESG documentation.

Also, urban planners can engage in services productisation, a situation where ESG services are packaged as products for clients. In services provision on areas such as smart cities and climate risk management, urban planners can package ESG advisory into digital solutions and diagnostics toolkits. Although there may not be a specific reference to ESG in the Nigerian curriculum, urban planners can develop their competence through partnerships, offline and online courses, and other professional development activities.

2.3.3 Circular Economy

Circular economy is an economic model that reduces waste and makes the most of available resources by keeping products and materials in use for as long as possible. This makes it possible to use the waste we generate as raw material for other industries. Circular economy operates through practical strategies such as sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing, and recycling. The goal is to lower demand for new raw materials and limit environmental harm by designing systems that extend the life and value of materials across their entire cycle.

The circular economy opens up new business opportunities for urban planning professionals who understand how to translate sustainability into spatial solutions. These opportunities vary by client type and can be packaged as specialised services, consultancy products, or collaborative pilots. Rather than focusing narrowly on recycling, circular economy planning is about redesigning systems from how materials flow through a city to how land is allocated for reuse, repair, or regeneration.

Urban planners can provide circular economy services for individuals, NGOs, business organisations, and public agencies and departments. For business organisations, this can involve integrating decentralised composting sites, shared sorting centres, repair and resale spaces, and water or energy recovery systems into new or existing layouts. For physical development, entrepreneurial opportunities lie in lifecycle planning for construction projects, developing centralised recycling facilities, and designing sustainable landscaping. Urban planners could develop ESG-aligned investment strategies in collaboration with architects and engineers. In the public sector, planners can advise governments at all levels, particularly local government, on neighbourhood-scale waste systems, public education initiatives, and land-use planning for regeneration. They also prepare circularity assessments, draft policies, and design master plans with dedicated circular economy zones, including pilot projects and innovation trials for donor funding.

2.3.4 Resilience, Smart City, Digital Mapping, Online Data Services, And Virtual Engagement

From resilience planning, smart city solutions, digital mapping, online data services, and virtual engagement, these areas provide different levels of entrepreneurial opportunities to urban planners to build sustainable businesses. Urban resilience focuses on creating systems that withstand shocks such as floods, infrastructure breakdowns, or social unrest. Urban planners can offer resilience audits, assess community preparedness, and design interventions for hazard-prone and sensitive areas of the settlement. This growing field connects directly to international funding opportunities for planners versed in resilience frameworks.

Smart city development applies technology to improve urban services in scalable ways. Urban planners with some level of digital and computing competence can create mobility solutions, IoT-based utility monitoring, or citizen feedback apps for land use and service reporting. Urban planners can collaborate with utility firms, real estate managers, or local councils to monitor waste, water usage, and lighting through the use of sensors and integrated systems. For instance, a mobile app that allows residents to report unapproved developments, contribute to local plans or applications for real-time land use tracking of physical development is a viable business model for urban planners.

Digital mapping transforms planning processes through faster, more accurate data collection and visualisation. Street mapping and address mapping enhance real-time monitoring of development, as many communities, especially informal or newly developing areas, lack consistent street naming and address systems, which hinder emergency response, delivery services, tax collection, and infrastructure planning. Urban planners can utilise off-the-shelf, low-cost drone technology and free, open-source software to conduct regular updates of the generated maps. These services are increasingly in demand and can be provided for logistics firms, public utilities agencies, telecommunications firms, and transport companies, among others.

Online data collection and dashboard services meet the growing need for structured, accessible datasets on planning issues. Urban planners could use mobile survey applications such as Epicollect5 or Kobo Toolbox, which are free applications and also have a spatial dimension of georeferencing. Urban planners can conduct audits, property assessments, or socio-economic surveys, then translate results into a database and also into dashboards that track service delivery and project implementation, increasing transparency and client value.

Virtual community engagement tools offer an inclusive alternative to traditional consultations. By using online surveys, messaging platforms, and participatory mapping, urban planners can collect resident input, prioritise needs, and co-design solutions in partnership with communities. These tools enhance both the quality of engagement and the credibility of the planning process. Urban planners can provide this service on a commercial basis for the planning and implementation of projects undertaken by firms, as well as support NGOs and physical development regulatory agencies in collecting resident feedback and prioritising community needs.

2.4 Sectoral Demand Drivers and Niche Markets for Urban Planning Services and Products

Behind every entrepreneurial opportunity in urban planning, there is a clear source of demand for services. While many urban planners, especially young ones, still focus on getting into the public sector as civil servants, the reality is that opportunities in the public sector are limited. At the same time, there are many opportunities for urban planners with an entrepreneurial mindset to explore service delivery, as multiple sectors now require planning-related services and are willing to outsource to specialised, flexible, and cost-effective urban planning consultancies.

In addition to my earlier discussion on entrepreneurial opportunities across different areas of urban planning (traditional and contemporary), understanding service demand drivers is essential for identifying viable markets and positioning for steady and profitable urban planning project work. Local governments, often under-resourced and overburdened, remain among the largest users of planning services. Entrepreneurs can partner with them to prepare neighbourhood layouts, manage community engagement, update local land use plans, provide GIS mapping services, digitise planning records, and offer physical planning permit advisory services. In the private sector, real estate developers need planning expertise at various stages of development, but rarely retain it in-house. This opens space for project-based or retainer models to handle site plans, permits, environmental assessments, zoning compliance, or mobility planning. Estate managers and cooperatives, especially in rapidly growing peri-urban areas, also require infrastructure audits and regulatory compliance services.

Also, other government-level, private sector, and international development agencies require various levels of planning services on disaster preparation plans, safety, poverty spatial data, and community profiling, among others. Educational institutions require spatial audits, campus layouts, traffic management plans, and environmental assessments for expansion projects. Private sector firms in manufacturing, logistics, telecoms, and finance increasingly rely on spatial analysis for site selection, flood risk assessment, and service coverage mapping, among others. In the Nigerian business environment, investors seeking to invest in the country require data for informed business decisions. Therefore, services such as urban trend analysis, demographic profiling, and location suitability studies are in high demand for business expansion decisions. Practising and young urban planners can position themselves as thought leaders on urban environmental management and general spatial development issues.

2.5 Conclusion

Urban planning holds significant untapped entrepreneurial potential, especially in Nigeria, where service gaps are wide and physical planning needs are increasing. Practising and young urban planners who understand diverse client needs and can size opportunities to deliver targeted and well-packaged services and products can build sustainable urban planning practices either as solo consultants or as part of a team/firm. Entrepreneurial opportunities exist in areas such as land use audits, real-time mapping, climate change services, sustainability and ESG, transport planning, and digital engagement. Urban planners’ success as entrepreneurs depends on several key factors. These include understanding client requirements, ensuring clarity in service delivery, being responsive, and providing services to the required extent.

Rather than waiting for limited public sector job opportunities, urban planners can prepare and position themselves as experts, thought leaders, and solution providers in both traditional and contemporary practice areas. While the examples provided here are extensive, they are by no means exhaustive, as there remain many other areas within urban planning where entrepreneurial opportunities can be explored. This article creates room for further discussion within the profession on how best to harness the potential of young and prospective urban planners, ensuring that the profession not only survives but thrives in the marketplace.

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1.1      Introduction

Entrepreneurship has taken a prominent place in recent discussions on economic growth and job creation; some facts support these claims, while others are largely based on speculation. Entrepreneurship is a crucial component and driver of national development, stimulating employment generation across various strata of society. Entrepreneurship offers numerous benefits to individuals, enabling them to address challenging social, economic, developmental, cultural, and technological problems. However, there is a need to master the process of entrepreneurship, which enables easy identification of opportunities, addresses the issue of entrepreneurial financing, enhances the process of business setup, and enables prospective or practicing entrepreneurs to derive maximum benefits from the process. 

This write-up series focuses on urban planning entrepreneurial opportunities, the tools for executing them, and how to utilise these tools, as well as case studies of planning entrepreneurial opportunities. In this lesson, I will focus on the entrepreneurial opportunities and the process involved. The lesson is divided into seven parts, which include: introduction, understanding entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial process, generating entrepreneurial insights, lean entrepreneurship ideas, entrepreneurial finance, entrepreneurial challenges and factors, and an overview of entrepreneurial opportunities.

1.2      Understanding Entrepreneurship and Process

Tom Eisenmann said that an entrepreneur must create and deliver something new, a solution to a customer’s problem that’s better than, or costs less than, current options. I like this definition because it focuses on what is offered rather than the age or size of the venture. Hence, an entrepreneur should CREATE and OFFER VALUE. As an entrepreneur, what issue do you want to address? What solutions do you have to offer? What are the customers’ pain points you want to alleviate? This, I believe, is how we should see entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship.

In entrepreneurship, there are inherent risks; the immediate future is not entirely foreseeable, despite engaging in various projections and calculations, and a degree of uncertainty remains. These uncertainties are risks, including demand risk, technological risk, execution risk, and financing risk. These are questions of whether there will be enough demand for the professional services, the question of having enough funds for setup, and whether there is access to appropriate technology to carry out the service offering, among others. These are risks that need to be planned for and overcome to avoid derailing the entrepreneurial journey.

Entrepreneurship is a way of thinking, reasoning, and acting with intense focused on solving problems and activities ultimately towards capturing value for the entrepreneurs and the general society. I also believed that an entrepreneur should have the appropriate mindset to succeed. An entrepreneurial mindset is a belief system, thought process, and behavioral pattern. There are different versions of what the mindset of an entrepreneur should be; however, across all these versions, there is some form of agreement. An entrepreneur should be positive-minded, tenacious, yet flexible when required to change their perspective, curious, possess basic numerical skills, be creative, and have good verbal and non-verbal communication skills. These mindsets can be developed by setting clear goals and sticking to them; however, these goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and have a well-defined time frame.

It is worth noting that a process underpins entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship should not be about aimless shots or efforts; specific procedures and processes should guide it. The entrepreneurship process entails a series of activities necessary to actualise an entrepreneurial idea. There are different forms of the entrepreneurial process; some consist of five steps, while others consist of six or seven steps. However, any format adopted should highlight problem/issue identification, idea conception, team selection, resource identification, identifying customer pain points, market testing, financing, prototype development, and service or product launch, among other key steps. It should be noted that this is not necessarily a linear process; sometimes, these steps could be alternated.

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1.3      Generating Entrepreneurial Insights

Entrepreneurship is mostly about seeing and seizing opportunities. This revolves around addressing challenges and issues to create and offer value for the benefits, which can be financial, social, or moral, to entrepreneurs. Identifying opportunities involves judgement and the decision-making process: how do we identify opportunities? What do we look out for? In generating entrepreneurial ideas for business setup, there are important components.  These components, as identified by Nils Nilsson, include the persons (entrepreneurs), environment, opportunity, process, and initiatives (the entrepreneurial idea), as shown in Figure 2.

These components (persons, environment, opportunity, and process) must work together as a system; all components are important and necessary to interact smoothly and generate effective initiatives (entrepreneurial ideas). The four items (persons, environment, opportunity, and process) are inputs that result in an output: initiative (the entrepreneurial idea). Nils aptly captures these components this way: “the person(s) enters into an environment, where they eventually notice an opportunity; they then engage in an entrepreneurial process to develop and form a ‘response’, which, if the process is successful, results in a new, value-generating initiative”. The person(s) dimension focuses on character, education, what need to learn; for the environment, the focus is on should we explore the existing environment or create; with regards to the opportunity, what are people pain points, what do they people lack, what are their desires and what plan are needed to actualise the entrepreneurial idea(s).  

1.4      Lean Entrepreneurship Idea

Entrepreneurship can be viewed as a blend of science and art; it involves a certain level of methodical practice, and similarly, there is also some element of intuitiveness that revolves around minimal actions or an elaborate, detailed plan, which is a central core of lean entrepreneurship. The lean entrepreneurship idea is about starting out at a minimal level, enabling entrepreneurs to test the market, understand the pulse of the market, and therefore fine-tune their services or products to meet the market’s needs.  

The ultimate aim is to reduce the level of waste that could result from a false entrepreneurial start.  The central idea of lean entrepreneurship is agility and continuously learning. For example, an entrepreneurial urban planner who adopts the lean entrepreneurship approach is expected to develop a minimum viable product (MVP), which could be either a service or a product, take it to the market, learn from the market's feedback, and refine it to meet the client’s needs.

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Steve Blank and Eric Ries pioneered the idea of the ‘Lean Startup’. Eric Ries developed the Lean Startup framework, which consists of the “Build-Measure-Learn” feedback loop (Figure 3). The build stage involves identifying problem/issue that requires a solution, building a minimum viable product, a minimal version of your urban planning product or service, for example, if you decided to engage in a digital mapping system, you could develop a basic version of this without huge capital outlay required for a full version, take to this market, presents to the prospective users to understand their perception and the performance of the product/service. Measure the outcome of your urban planning products/services using the right metrics (measurement parameters) and learn from the experience. Then, decide whether to continue or discontinue the idea based on the results.

1.5      Entrepreneurial Finance

Entrepreneurial finance focuses on addressing the financial management challenges that arise during your entrepreneurial journey. This is one of the major challenges an entrepreneurial urban planner would face and needs to be addressed early in the entrepreneurial journey. How do you source capital for the startup? Is there any issue of debt to be address? How do you manage the business cash flow? Who organises your financial statements? What is your plan for marketing and sales of products and services? What do you do with the startup valuation? Are you building to sell? All these questions are imperative entrepreneurial finance questions that need to be thoroughly and objectively answered. 

As an urban planner interested in an entrepreneurial journey, you need to have a basic understanding of these financial issues. However, it is not compulsory that you have an advanced level of knowledge of these issues; you could engage the services of qualified professionals to carry out these tasks for you.

1.6      Entrepreneurial Failure and Factors

Tom Eisenmann, the revered entrepreneurship and new ventures professor at Harvard Business School, wrote a book in 2021 titled “Why Startups Fail.” he identified six major reasons why the majority of entrepreneurial ventures fail. These reasons have global applications, meaning they can be seen as reasons for the failure of entrepreneurial ventures across different countries. These include dysfunctional relationships between the parties involved in the entrepreneurial idea, such as relationships among the founders, employees, investors, and other partners.  Another reason for entrepreneurial venture failure is the lack of a market for the idea; most entrepreneurs fail to understand the market and the needs of their customers. Additionally, excessive optimism regarding the entrepreneurial idea, particularly in terms of market demand and sources of finance, often leads to the idea's failure.

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Furthermore, growing too quickly and receiving poor external advice can lead to the failure of an entrepreneurial venture. Other factors identified by other business thinkers include a poor business model, inadequate change management, flawed competitor assessment, poor locational decisions for the business, funding challenges, inadequate customer service, and flawed market assessment. CB Insights highlighted twelve reasons for the failures of entrepreneurial ventures (See Figure 4). Similarly, the entrepreneurial landscape in Nigeria faces numerous challenges, including financial constraints, policy issues, and an inadequate support framework for small and medium-scale enterprises. 

Please note that the focus of this section is not to scare would-be urban planning entrepreneurs and deter them, but to give a form of EARLY WARNING SYSTEM FRAMEWORK. These are likely challenges you could face in your urban planning entrepreneurial journey. Be aware of these factors and plan accordingly. In the course of thinking about your entrepreneurial ideas, you should also consider how to avoid or work around these failure factors. So, I implore you to take the above-mentioned entrepreneurial failure factors as EARLY WARNING SIGNS to enhance the success of your entrepreneurial exploration.

1.7      Urban Planning Entrepreneurial Opportunities Overview

The next lesson (Lesson Two) will focus on different entrepreneurial opportunities available to practicing urban planners. The opportunity exploration would focus on both traditional and contemporary/digital planning opportunities. The discussion would highlight the opportunities, both why and what, and explore the reasons behind them, as well as practical applications in Nigeria and globally.

A code of conduct for professional practice is a set of rules and guidelines designed to govern the behaviour and actions of individuals within a profession. It defines the ethical standards, responsibilities, and expected practices that members should follow to maintain integrity, professionalism, and public trust. The code typically covers areas such as integrity, fairness, confidentiality, accountability, respect for colleagues and clients, and compliance with laws and regulations, among other key principles.

The code of conduct encompasses both aspirational and mandatory standards. Aspirational standards define the high conduct we strive for as professionals, an expectation we hold for ourselves, even if not easily measurable. Mandatory standards set firm, non-optional requirements, sometimes limiting or prohibiting specific professional behaviours in the public sphere.[1]

In broad terms, a professional code of conduct provides clear expectations that help individuals within a given profession act consistently and responsibly. It is therefore apt to note that the ultimate goal of a code of conduct is to build trust between professionals and the public by showing a commitment to ethical behaviour. When faced with tough choices, the code provides a reference point to guide professional decisions, minimising the uncertainty level to the bare minimum. This encourages professionals to consider their actions carefully, knowing that there are established standards to adhere to, along with appropriate sanctions for non-compliance. A professional code of conduct, therefore, protects the reputation of individuals and the profession.

This article focuses on Nigeria’s town planning profession and considers the position of the code of conduct on the advertisement of urban planning consultancy services. The validity of the widespread notion among urban planners that planning consultancies are prohibited from advertising their services to the general public was examined. Some pertinent questions were raised to explore how urban planners could develop strategic marketing approaches to reach the broader business community and claim a stake at the table to discuss and propose robust measures to address Nigeria’s social, cultural, economic, and physical development challenges.

2.0 Code of Professional Conduct and Practice Regulations for Registered Town Planners

Globally and in Nigeria, professional activities are guided by the Code of Conduct, which encompasses both generic and specific themes. Urban and regional planning professional practice in Nigeria is guided by the Code of Professional Conduct and Practice Regulations for Registered Town Planners, which came into effect on 16^th October 1998. The regulations comprise seven articles and nine sections.[2]

The regulations define professional integrity, mandating honesty, probity, and a professional attitude from all registered town planners in Nigeria. It prohibits conflicts of interest, undertaking duties contrary to professional opinion, and the solicitation of work. The code stipulates that fees for professional services must adhere to an approved scale, with negotiation permitted only within reasonable boundaries. Special provisions apply to civil servants and public officers regarding planning work, restricting their engagement in private planning work unless their conditions of service explicitly permit it.

Additionally, the regulations outline specific protocols, including how members should address each other and the use of the "Town Planner" prefix before their names in public settings. It also outlines advertising guidelines, permitting certain forms of publicity (such as seeking staff or announcing new offices), but strictly prohibiting misleading or self-aggrandising advertisements. Unethical practices, such as undue influence, unfair competition, or discrediting colleagues, are explicitly forbidden.

For consultancy services, the regulations outline a structured commissioning procedure, requiring consultants to submit proposals that detail the project workload, fees, and timelines. A Registered Town Planner must be the prime consultant for physical development plans, and all planning applications and projects in Nigeria require appropriate professional regulatory stamps. Violations of these regulations are addressed by Section 13 of the enabling Decree No. 3 of 1988.

3.0 Can Town Planning Firms in Nigeria Advertise Their Services

TOPREC Rules and Regulations for the Control of the Town Planning Practice Article III Section 9 categorise planning firms in Nigeria into practice firms and consulting firms. [3] The Code of Professional Conduct and Practice Regulations for Registered Town Planners, Article 3, Section 5 Advertisement and Publicity, focused on the conditions under which a Registered Town Planning firm may or may not advertise its consultancy services, as well as the restrictions and requirements for such advertisements.

While a general prohibition exists against unrestricted advertising of professional planning services (subsection 2), the code outlines specific scenarios under which a town planner or their firm may place advertisements in the press (subsection 3). These include seeking staff (subsection 3a), acting on behalf of a client to procure personnel (subsection 3b), facilitating property or business transactions for a client (subsection 3c), announcing new office openings or changes in address (subsection 3d), informing the public about a member's appointment to positions of national or local importance or to company boards (subsection 3e), and placing congratulatory, obituary, or other ancillary messages for the Council, partners, and staff (subsection 3f). Furthermore, registered town planners are allowed to use their professional designation and designatory letters when participating in radio or television programmes or submitting articles and letters to the press (subsection 4).

For direct advertising of urban planning consultancy services, a firm may do so to inform the public, provided the advertisement adheres to specific conditions as judged by the Council (subsection 5). Such advertisements must be primarily informative rather than impressive in size and scale, generally not exceeding a quarter or half of a page (subsection 5a). Advertisements are prohibited from discrediting the services of others by claiming superiority (subsection 5b), containing comparisons with other members or firms (subsection 5c), being misleading directly or by implication (subsection 5d), being indecent, dishonest, or untrue (subsection 5e), falling short of the Council's ethical standards (subsection 5f), or appearing as part of the firm's professional statement (subsection 5g).

The regulations clearly outline what advertisements must not contain: inaccurate statements of fact (subsection 11a), explicit comparisons between the services offered by the advertising member and other registered members (subsection 11b), or any endorsement of a commercial product (subsection 11c). It could be inferred that these measures are put in place to ensure that urban planning consultancies’ marketing campaigns are carried out in a manner that does not bring the profession to disrepute.

Based on the above, contrary to the widely held belief that urban planning consultancies in Nigeria cannot advertise their services, the TOPREC Code of Conduct and Practice Regulations (Article 3 Section 5: Advertisement and Publicity) permit urban planning consultancies to engage in advertisement and publicity (marketing, branding, promotional strategy, corporate promotion) using traditional and digital platforms, though with some strict ethical guidelines.

4.0 Advertising Urban Planning Practice: A Call to Action

Urban planning firms can no longer afford to remain invisible in Nigeria’s competitive professional services delivery environment, particularly with an increased incursion into service delivery areas, which are traditionally seen as the urban planning domain (See Figure 2). It is therefore pertinent to ask how Nigerian urban planning firms across the country can leverage advertising and publicity, including marketing, branding, promotional strategies, and corporate promotion, to engage the broader Nigerian business community and showcase their capabilities in rendering services beyond traditional urban planning projects.

Some of these services include sustainability services (sustainability strategy development, sustainability assessments, sustainable supply chain management, sustainability assurance), Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), green infrastructure development, sustainable finance, renewable energy programme implementation, climate change resilience, and local economic development programs among other services moving beyond traditional planning services.

Urban planning firms should leverage strategic marketing tools to position themselves as firms attuned to present-day global development realities; they should convey a clear message to the broader business community about their capability to deliver contemporary urban planning services. How? This could be achieved by emphasising how urban planning services contribute to a return on investment, showcasing firm's capabilities in modern planning services through the preparation of case studies, and utilising thought leadership and strategic content marketing to position the firm and its consultants as solution providers, showing how urban planning services can improves logistics, reduces carbon footprint, and supports local economic growth among other urban planning contributions.

Firm thought leadership could be a policy brief, industry-specific research, or a policy position paper. Some of these measures have been adequately deployed by consultancies in other fields (See Figures 4 and 5). Urban planning firms should devote special attention to advertising and marketing measures by establishing a dedicated marketing unit. However, considering the small-sized nature of most urban planning consultancies in Nigeria, marketing efforts could be outsourced to a marketing firm or freelance marketing professionals at an affordable cost. It is, however, worth reiterating that there is a compelling need to be ethical in urban planning practice advertising and marketing processes in order to adhere to the extant regulations and rules governing the conduct of urban planning firms in Nigeria.

5.0 Conclusion

This article noted that urban planning firms in Nigeria are not prohibited from advertising their services, as evidenced in Article 3 of the TOPREC Code of Conduct and Practice Regulations. Urban planning consultancies should explore the potential of marketing and advertising to project a positive image and present their firms as valuable partners in addressing Nigeria’s social, economic, environmental, and physical development at the national, regional, state, and local levels.

Non-involvement in professional services marketing and advertising makes the urban planning consultancy landscape more obscure, giving more edge to non-urban planning consultancies to leverage in the delivery of contemporary urban planning services. Therefore, there is a need for a reconsideration of the non-interest position of urban planning consulting firms, individual urban planners, and urban planning consultants across Nigeria towards their practice marketing and advertising.

Strategic marketing and advertising of urban planning practices help inform and educate the broader business community about the roles of urban planning consultancies in addressing Nigeria’s development challenges, ultimately elevating individual firm profile and the overall profile of the urban planning consultancy landscape in Nigeria.

It is time to take proactive steps; urban planning firms should begin by developing a robust marketing strategy aligned with TOPREC regulations to ensure urban planning consultancies in Nigeria are visible to the broader business community.

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NOTES

[1] Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct for the Urban and Regional Planning Profession, South Africa. Government Gazette, 17 June 2011, No. 34376

[2] TOPREC Code of Conduct & Practice Regulations. Town Planners Registration Council of Nigeria, 25th May, 2014.

[3] TOPREC Rules and Regulations for the Control of the Town Planning Practice, Federal Government Press, Lagos, 2015.

The quest for development across different sectors is a global phenomenon. These developments increase local and national economic trajectory, improve mobility, create employment, reduce mortality, and improve settlement livability among others. However, these developments could negatively impact if not properly carried out. Impact analysis allows for assessing different development initiatives to maximise their benefits while minimizing their negative impacts.

There are variants of impact analysis, but social, economic, and environmental dimensions are important because they are central to sustainability discourse and encompass other impact analysis types. This article presents an overview of social, economic, and environmental impact analysis, key tools, and implementation challenges, and it outlines actions to strengthen impact analysis application.

2.0 Impact Analysis Perspectives

Impact analysis is a decision-making tool. It helps planners, policymakers, investors and local communities understand the likely implications of a development initiative before implementation. These effects can be social (how people live and interact), economic (jobs, markets, income), or environmental (air quality, water use, land degradation). Impact analysis focuses not on predicting the future but on asking the right questions using relevant tools to ascertain the likely implications of a proposed development or policy initiative in a specific local community.

The essence is to put in place measures to reduce or remove any identified negative impact or to discontinue the proposed development if the identified implications are grave. Among the questions to ask are: Will the proposed housing development displace low-income families? Will a new power plant create jobs without damaging surrounding ecosystems? Will a new tax policy widen inequality rather than enhance equal distribution of wealth?

The impact analysis process is guided by local, national, and international standards, which set benchmarks for development projects. In Nigeria, these include the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Act, Cap E12 LFN 2004; National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA) Act, 2007; in the USA, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), 1969; in the United Kingdom., the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2017 and Canada, the Impact Assessment Act (IAA), 2019.

It is instructive that no specific or standalone legislation exists for social and economic impact analysis across countries. These processes are often derived from environmental impact legislation and other legislations, such as equality, human rights, and health-related laws. In essence, there is an identified gap in the social and economic impact analysis regulatory framework from a global perspective. Governments across the world have also adopted the use of regulatory impact assessment (RIA). RIA is a systemic approach to critically assessing the positive and negative effects of proposed and existing regulations and non-regulatory alternatives.[1]

Impact analysis varies widely in quality and depth. Some assessments thoroughly involve community input, scientific data, and long-term thinking, and others are rushed or treated as a formality. Instances where impact analysis is rushed or treated as mere formality could be seen in some government development initiatives. In Nigeria, there were concerns that the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) was conducted after the project had started[2] and that the prepared report failed to address a series of issues, including shoreline erosion.[3]

2.1 Social Impact Analysis (SIA)

Social Impact Analysis (SIA) central focus is on how a development initiative affects people’s lives in livelihood shifts, access to services, displacement risks, community cohesion, and perceptions of fairness. SIA identifies who will be affected directly or indirectly; these include residents, business owners, workers, or informal groups. Mapping these groups early is crucial. Once stakeholders are identified, the next step is understanding potential negative and positive impacts. For instance, a market redevelopment project might improve community sanitation but displace traders without providing alternative trading locations.

Baseline surveys, stakeholder mapping, and focus group discussions are often used to gather information for social impact analysis.[4] Stakeholder mapping identifies who is impacted, their interests, and their influence, and helps to ensure all interests are considered. Social baseline surveys establish a starting point by collecting data on demographics, livelihoods, education, and health before any intervention.

Focus group discussions bring community members together to share perspectives in their own words. Key informant interviews add depth by capturing insights from individuals with local knowledge or professional expertise. The Lekki Free Trade Zone development initiative was criticised in Nigeria because the communities felt excluded from planning decisions and faced land acquisition and displacement without clear resettlement plans.[5] Social impact analysis is a tool for more inclusive development.

2.2 Economic Impact Analysis (EcIA)

Economic impact analysis examines how proposed initiatives influence market dynamics, employment, and long-term productivity within a given community. It focuses on how a project could impact local, regional, and national economies, jobs, income, productivity, business activities, and public revenue. Both direct and indirect implications are identified. For example, constructing an interstate coastal highway might create thousands of short-term construction jobs, improve the local economy and enhance mobility through reduced travel time. However, the same project could result in rising property prices, negatively impacting low-income earners' ability to afford decent housing. Proper economic impact analysis identifies the economic effects of a given development initiative, and adequate measures are proffered.

Economic impact analysis uses various tools to assess projects or policy impacts. Cost-benefit analysis focuses on expected costs against projected benefits to judge overall value and whether the long-term economic value of a project justifies the investment. The input-output analysis traces how spending flows between sectors, helping to estimate the indirect and induced effects of a given development initiative on a given community. Social accounting matrices provide a detailed snapshot of income flows and production across an economy, often used to explore distributional impacts. At the same time, multiplier analysis calculates how initial investments generate wider economic activity, particularly in jobs and output. These tools offer a structured approach to understanding the economic consequences of a given development initiative.

2.3 Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) examines how a project will affect the natural and built environment. EIA identifies the potential impacts of a development initiative and recommends measures to address any negative consequences. For example, if a proposed industrial plant is expected to pollute a water body, recommended measures could be the construction of a water treatment system in the industrial plant, the development of buffer zones between the industrial plant and the water body, or alternative locations for the industrial plant. Good environmental impact analysis practices include collecting detailed baseline data, modelling scenarios and community feedback on proposed mitigation.

Environmental impact analysis uses various tools to assess how projects may affect the natural and built environment. The process often begins with screening checklists that help decide whether a full environmental assessment is needed. Scoping studies to narrow the focus to the most significant environmental issues. Baseline environmental surveys to collect air quality, water sources, soil health, and biodiversity data which provide a reference point for later comparisons. An environmental modelling tool to simulate impacts such as emissions, noise, and water flow helps project teams visualise consequences before they occur. Risk assessments to estimate the likelihood and potential severity of environmental impacts. Environmental monitoring tools are used to ensure that actions taken remain effective and meet regulatory parameters over time. These tools work together to support decisions that protect natural and built environment conditions.

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2.4 Connecting Social, Economic, and Environmental Impact Analysis

Social, economic, and environmental impact analyses are often treated as distinct components within project planning and policy assessment. However, their interconnectedness is central to achieving balanced and sustainable public and private sector development outcomes. Integrating these three dimensions offers a more complete understanding of the consequences of development initiatives and allows for more informed and ethical decision-making.

Social impacts do not occur in a vacuum; economic realities and environmental conditions frequently shape them. For instance, the displacement of communities due to the construction of a new stadium affects social cohesion and access to services, disrupts local economies, and exposes affected populations to environmental risks such as pollution or flooding. Similarly, economic development initiatives that aim to boost employment and income levels can generate negative environmental externalities if not carefully managed, leading to long-term degradation of natural resources that communities depend on for their livelihoods.

From a policy and planning perspective, separating these dimensions may result in fragmented assessments that overlook critical trade-offs to achieve sustainable development. For example, a project deemed economically viable based on cost-benefit analysis may be socially unsustainable if it increases inequality or excludes vulnerable groups. Likewise, an environmentally sound project may fail to consider social acceptability or economic feasibility. Therefore, any given development initiative must integrate the three dimensions of impact analysis (social, economic and environmental) to achieve sustainable development. In essence, social, economic, and environmental impact analysis dimensions are not separate checkboxes; they are interconnected processes that determine the overall impact of a given development initiative.

This integrated approach aligns with global sustainability principles and supports the realisation of sustainable development goals (see Figure 2). Environmental, social, and economic impact assessments collectively function as ex-ante evaluation tools to decide whether a project should proceed.

3.0 Impact Analysis Sectoral Applications

Impact analysis supports decision-making across a wide range of sectors to anticipate development initiatives' social, economic, and environmental impacts, both positive and negative. Impact analysis in transport explores how transportation projects (road, terminal, rail, etc) impact people's movement patterns, job access, social cohesion, and local economic development.

In housing development, impact analysis helps identify likely implications on property markets, population displacement, shifts in community structure, and impact on access or quality of public utilities and infrastructure. The energy sector impact analysis focuses on understanding emissions or ecosystem disruption of the energy project, how the energy investments will influence productivity, job creation, or regional development, and how changes in access to energy affect education, health, and small businesses.

In agriculture, impact analysis helps measure returns on investment, employment potential, effects on national food systems, land rights, rural livelihoods, and local food access to avoid unintended consequences such as exclusion of smallholder farmers or unsustainable land conversion. In health and education, impact analysis focuses on access, discrimination, or cultural resistance, and helps ensure services reach those most in need.

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4.0 Impact Analysis Implementation Challenges

While impact analysis is widely recognised as a critical planning and decision-making tool across different sectors, its implementation often encounters significant challenges. These challenges arise from institutional weaknesses, technical limitations, political interference, and procedural gaps that undermine the credibility and effectiveness of the impact analysis process. It should be noted that these challenges cut across developed and developing countries. Assessments are often delayed, rushed, or conducted with insufficient data, leading to incomplete or unreliable outcomes. The lack of strict enforcement mechanisms, inadequate stakeholder engagement, and over-reliance on generic templates further compound these issues.

One of the most common and detrimental implementation issues is the late initiation of impact assessments. In some cases, assessments begin only after finalizing key project decisions, leaving little room for impact analysis outcomes to influence the design or execution of the development initiative. This practice reduces impact analysis to a formality, limiting its ability to identify and address significant project concerns.

Another critical challenge is the poor quality or absence of reliable data. Effective impact analysis depends on accurate baseline information, yet many assessments rely on outdated, rushed, or incomplete data. Stakeholder exclusion is another widespread issue that significantly weakens the impact analysis process. Critical information is lost when affected communities are not adequately engaged. Also, excluding stakeholders often leads to conflict, project delays, or outright rejection of the project process. Resistance grows when communities feel marginalised by decisions that alter their social or economic environment.

Oversight and accountability are also commonly lacking. Even when comprehensive reports are prepared, implementation of recommended mitigation measures is not always monitored or enforced. Also, consultancy firms' tendency to apply generic templates to the impact analysis process undermines the relevance of impact assessments. Projects across different locations and sectors require tailored approaches that reflect local context and sector-specific risks. Yet, some consultancy firms formed the habit of replicating existing documents with some form of minimal adaptation. This practice fails to capture the complexity of specific projects and reduces the analytical value of the entire impact analysis process.

These implementation challenges are observed in both developed and developing countries. They are prevalent with particular reference to Nigeria, making it imperative for stronger institutional commitment, improved technical capacity, and more rigorous regulatory oversight. Impact analysis should function as a core planning and decision-making mechanism, not just a procedural requirement. Raising the implementation standard requires early initiation, inclusive engagement, and a robust accountability framework to ensure that the findings of impact assessments translate into sustainable actions in the project implementation process.

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5.0 Conclusion and Call to Action

It is worth reiterating that impact analysis is not just a technical step but a critical part of making development initiatives across sectors work for people, economies, and the environment. When social, economic, and environmental consequences are considered early, impact analysis becomes a process of making thoughtful choices, managing risks, and improving outcomes towards sustainable development.

Across sectors from housing and transport to agriculture and energy, impact analysis helps us ask the right questions before making irreversible detrimental decisions. The impact analysis process should be seen as an important part development process, not a mere formality. It should be a tool for better governance and inclusive development. The impact analysis process should not be seen as a box to tick but as the starting point to get development right, improve living conditions and achieve sustainable development.

[1] www.oecd.org/regreform/regulatory-policy/ria.htm

[2] https://businessday.ng/analysis/article/five-unanswered-questions-about-lagos-calabar-coastal-road/

[3] https://punchng.com/lagos-calabar-highway-panel-seeks-review-of-esia-draft-affecting-community/#google_vignette

[4] Vanclay, F. et al., “Social Impact Assessment: Guidance for assessing and managing the social impacts of projects,” International Association for Impact Assessment, 2015.

[5] Global Rights Nigeria, “Land Displacement and Community Resistance in the Lekki Free Trade Zone,” 2020.

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This article is based on my years of teaching urban planning research as a subject, engaging in urban planning research as a consultant, and acting as a research advisor to professionals and post-graduate students. Urban and regional planning is a discipline that addresses issues and challenges in the built and natural environment. Urban planning is a deliberate process of managing and shaping the physical development of cities, including land use, transportation networks, infrastructure, and public spaces [1]. The broad goal of this process is to create a functional, sustainable, and socially equitable settlement, which is carried out through the preparation of development plans and initiatives.

However, we cannot develop a plan for an area before we understand it[2]. Before planning, we must understand the planning area, its peculiarities and other issues. Understanding these needs is where applied research in urban and regional planning comes in. Applied research is conducted to offer practical solutions to real-world problems. An example is a post-occupancy evaluation of residential housing units to inform local authorities on how residents are experiencing a newly developed housing project[3].

To extract information for development planning to address issues such as land use management, housing provision and affordability, environmental management, public health, general infrastructure provision and mobility issues, among others, urban and regional planners rely on applied research; this helps to capture the prevailing situation in the study area, helps to ensure planning decisions consider the local communities’ peculiar situation, identify prevailing development pattern and addresses complex societal challenges.

Applied research enhances urban planning outcomes, as with every other endeavour, in areas such as economy, finance, economic management, public health, and technology. Applied research helps to resolve real-world problems. Notably, the applied research structure could be different for urban planning academics than for urban planning consultancy engagement. Applied research is tied to various modes of urban planning. In this article the explanation of applied research is tied to academic and consultancy urban and regional planning activities, and significant aspects of applied research are covered in this article (Figure 1). The article’s main objective is to help urban planning researchers, practitioners, and students (undergraduate and post-graduate students) have a robust understanding of applied research processes in urban and regional planning.

2.0 Identifying Research Problems

Urban planning research begins with identifying specific challenges or issues faced in a prospective plan area, either urban or rural. Some of these challenges or issues could be urban sprawl emergence, inefficient transportation systems, poor housing environment, deficit housing supply, lopsided local economic development, ageing population, public health issues, increasing crime rate, lack of gender inclusiveness in settlement development and environmental degradation, among others. Problem identification involves assessing these issues within broader local contexts. The issues mentioned earlier must be examined carefully beyond the symptoms. For instance, housing shortages in a specific area could be due to one or multiple factors: population growth, regulatory barriers, inadequate finance, rigid development control processes, and housing market inefficiencies, among others. A robust problem-identification process ensures that research questions are both relevant and actionable. This implies that formulating urban planning research questions is premised on a robust planning problem and issues identification. It should also be stated that problem identification could be refined based on the outcome of data collection for specific urban planning issues in any given settlement. The process of defining a problem requires basic data support[4].

For example, as an urban planner within a given city, you observed that a certain segment has a higher petty crime rate than others, negatively impacting the security, livability and the local community’s economic growth. You will then proceed to identify a series of issues attached to this crime rate; this process is further improved through reading through published local development reports, police reports, and judicial reports, among others, to further establish crime pattern and rates. Planning research problems could be derived from the day-to-day urban planner practice in the academic, public, or private sector, from reviewing previous project reports, reading local news publications, or from input from residents of the local community. To resolve identified planning problems highlighted in the previous discussion, specific questions need to be generated, which will be answered during the research. Also, research aim need to be developed in addition to specific research objectives.

3.0 Research Questions, Aim, and Objectives

After identifying the research problems for a given planning area or planning topic, turning the problems into question format ensures that urban planners have a more concentrated approach to providing solutions to planning problems and issues. Research questions provide a focus and a direction to research. Research questions translate planning challenges and planning topics into specific areas of enquiry. The structure research questions take is determined by the nature of the planning study, topic or project.

Broadly, research questions can be categorised into descriptive, analytical, evaluative, and policy-oriented. Descriptive research questions seek to highlight urban issues and patterns. Example: What are the main factors contributing to mobility issues (traffic congestion) in the city centre? Answering this question requires traffic volume, land use, and transport infrastructure data. Analytical research questions explore relationships between planning research variables. Example: How does the availability of affordable housing influence population density in urban settlements? This question requires assessing housing affordability indices, demographic trends, and land use patterns. Evaluative research questions determine the effectiveness of implemented urban planning policies, development plans or interventions. Example: To what extent has the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system reduced travel times in the study area? This question requires comparing travel data before and after BRT implementation in the study location. Policy-oriented research questions focus on planning solutions. Example: What housing affordability policies can address the high cost of public and private housing units in an urban area? The answers to such questions would inform policy recommendations.

Academic research aim and objectives or planning project aim and objectives need to be developed. The research aim clearly states the planning study’s purpose or project. In applied urban planning research, aim should align with practical concerns to solve a real-world challenge or issue. Aim defines the intended outcome and ensures that research findings contribute directly to the body of knowledge or ensure practical planning solutions and strategies. For instance, if a study focuses on housing shortages, the aim could be to examine the factors contributing to inadequate housing supply towards proposing planning interventions on housing supply. Notably, a well-defined aim establishes the direction of the research and ensures relevance to urban planning practice. For planning consultancy projects, research aim are shaped by the client’s needs or the project area’s planning challenges. For example, a local council focused on addressing mobility issues could conduct a research to understand and resolve the mobility issue. The research aim will be to identify mobility problems and propose planning strategies to address the local council mobility challenge adequately.

Research objectives are to break down research aim into specific, measurable, and actionable components. A research objective is expected to help understand the effectiveness of existing planning interventions, for example, the level of effectiveness of any previous mobility initiatives in the local council, causes of identified planning issues, dictate the data collection, analysis, and interpretation process and recommendations on the identified planning issues and research topic. Another example is a study on an informal settlement development process and its impact on residents’ living conditions. This study’s research objectives will include an assessment of the land tenure processes, socio-economic conditions in the settlement, regulatory issues contributing to sprawl development, and the impact of settlement conditions on dweller wellbeing. Therefore, research objectives aid in measuring these identified factors to achieve the research aim.

4.0 Literature Review

A literature review ensures urban planning research builds on existing knowledge. A literature review in urban planning academic research helps define research questions, establish theoretical frameworks, and highlight the study’s relevance. In contrast, the literature review of the urban planning practice project report identifies best-case studies and acts as a guiding principle for planning projects. It should be noted that the planning academic research report is expected to have a literature review section, but the urban planning consultancy project report might not have a standard literature review section as obtained in the academic research report.

Broadly, a literature review provides urban planners with a foundation for their work, synthesising findings from other research work, official publications, and relevant urban planning projects. More importantly, a literature review helps urban planners identify gaps in the existing body of knowledge concerning a particular research topic or planning project, showing areas that need further exploration.

Academic urban planning research requires a structured literature review to establish the study’s foundation in the existing body of knowledge. Literature reviews in academic research serve three primary functions: to clarify research questions, establish a theoretical foundation of the study and highlight the study’s significance by justifying the study’s contribution to the existing body of knowledge[5]. For urban planning project reports, a literature review enables the identification of similar projects and the selection of the best case study to serve as a reference point for the proposed project, establish guiding principles for the proposed project, and also guide in the formulation of policy for the proposed planning project. For urban planning academic reports, the literature review is foundational, while for urban planning consultancy projects, the literature review provides supporting evidence for recommendations.

5.0 Research Design

Research design is the process of deliberately planning for a research task. It serves as a framework that directs how the research topic is addressed, data is gathered, and analysis is carried out. Research design is an essential part of the research process and guides the study’s goals with the procedures needed to accomplish them. The nine main research design strategies are mixed methods, grounded theory, ethnography, archival research, narrative inquiry, action research, survey, and case study[6]. As shown in Table 1, each technique has distinct qualities and is appropriate for particular research questions and objectives.

6.0 Research Methodology

Research methodology gives detailed steps to the process or phases of the study from start to finish, emphasising the types of research instruments and methods required to collect and analyse representative data[7]. Research methodology focuses on both quantitative and qualitative dimensions of research. Quantitative methods use numerical data and statistical analysis to identify trends, correlations, and predictive models in urban planning issues, ensuring objectivity and enabling large-scale generalisation. Qualitative methods explore non-numerical data to understand urban planning issues using interviews, focus groups, and ethnographic observations; this allows urban planners to capture different perspectives on any given planning challenge or issue.

7.0 Data Collection in Urban Planning

Data collection is a critical phase in the urban planning research process; this research stage serves different purposes, including answering the research questions, refining the research problem, and ascertaining the magnitude of a research problem. Urban planning data are often location-specific, including population, economy, housing, transportation, environmental conditions, public health, and physical development intensity. Data is the collection of variables and observations explaining the features of the study subjects. Data can be quantitative or qualitative. Quantitative data are data in numerical format, while qualitative data are data in texts, narratives, visual materials, etc., to describe the feature of a variable.

Primary data collection methods include surveys, interviews, and field observations, while secondary collection data often involves census reports, GIS data, and policy documents. Primary data are newly collected data, while secondary data are data that have been previously used for either academic research or consultancy projects. Urban planners rely on primary and secondary data for academic writing and consultancy work engagement. Data dimensions include variables and attributes; variables are the logical groupings of attributes, while attributes are characteristics of people or things, and observations are all the study subjects presented in a dataset. In the dataset, attributes are the columns in a spreadsheet describing the attributes of the observations (Figure 2).

Data levels of measurement (measurement scale) are nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio. Nominal variables are used to “name” or label a series of values. Ordinal scales provide good information about the order of choices. Interval scales give us the order of values + the ability to quantify the difference between each one, and ratio scales give us the ultimate–order interval values plus the ability to calculate ratios since a “true zero” can be defined (Figure 3).

Effective data collection, in addition to other parameters, is also premised on the sampling process; this helps to determine the representativeness of sample coverage. In data collection, there is a need to differentiate between census data and sample data; census data explores the attributes and characteristics of all the elements in a study population, while sample data only explores a subset of all the elements in the study population. Study populations can be human beings, animals, places, or organisations. Census is usually time-consuming, expensive, and often statistically unnecessary; therefore, sampling is necessary.

Sampling methods depend on research objectives. The sampling method could either be probabilistic or non-probabilistic. Probabilistic sampling ensures representativeness, while non-probabilistic techniques do not focus on representativeness but are suitable for targeted studies. For any given urban planning project or academic research report, if representativeness is important and sample data will be used to generalise for the whole population, it is recommended that probability sampling techniques be adopted.

8.0 Data Analysis in Urban Planning

For urban planners to provide suitable solutions to identified problems, there is a need to understand the local community dynamics; this is possible through collecting relevant data and analysis of collected data using both descriptive and inferential statistical tools to draw inferences for planning proposal development. Data analysis translates raw data into planning information for planning actions (preparation of development plans such as local plans, master plans, regional plans, and structure plans, among others). Urban planning information results from urban planners’ interpretation of collected data based on the outcome of different levels of statistical analysis of quantitative and qualitative data from a specific plan area (Figure 4).

Once the data is collected, describing the data is often the first analysis step, regardless of whether it is qualitative or quantitative data. Different methods will be used to explore more complex relationships among variables. For example, for quantitative data regression or correlation analytical tools could be used to probe the statistical relationship between the independent and dependent variables, while for qualitative data methods such as thematic coding, concept mapping, and other forms of qualitative analysis tools could be used to identify pattern in sample responses, this is in addition to basic descriptive analysis of the sample responses.

An independent variable is a variable that we expect to affect a dependent variable; in essence, the dependent variable is subject to the dynamic of an independent variable. For instance, if an urban planner is interested in the crime rate in a local community, data on gender, education, age, unemployment rate, housing condition, and law enforcement effectiveness will be required and used to explain the level of crime in the local community. These variables are independent, while the crime rate is the dependent variable.

9.0 Findings Reporting and Communication

Planners must present the results of planning data analysis to the public, clients, or key interest groups; this could be in the form of a direct presentation of the data analysis outcome or a presentation of a planning proposal (masterplan, urban renewal plan, structure plan, local plan and subdivision plan among others) derived from the result of the planning data analysis. It is expected that the goal of every urban planner is to generate consensus on proposed planning action. This consensus is better achieved through good planning information presentation that educates the planning stakeholders and interest groups. Therefore, urban planning data analysis moves from understanding relationships of observations in the planning area to understanding spatial patterns and urban growth to achieving public acceptance (Consensus) Figure 5.

Effective communication of urban planning findings through well-prepared and reader-focused reports guarantees that the stakeholders will accept the research results. When communicating urban planning findings, either academic research reports or urban planning project reports, visual aids like charts, maps, and infographics are crucial. For instance, a heatmap that displays traffic congestion patterns might be used to illustrate the need for additional transportation routes. Numerous stakeholders with various interests are usually involved in urban planning projects. To address these various needs, urban planners should have customised outputs; for example, for the presentation at policy briefings with policymakers who have limited time to go through a huge volume of reports, planners could use an executive summary report; for the local community planners could use pictorial representation, and for general stakeholder meeting another mode of presentation could be adopted. These suggestions imply that urban planning report communication tailored to each stakeholder’s needs guarantees that relevant stakeholders will easily accept urban planners’ recommendations and suggestions.

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10. Ethical Consideration in Urban Planning Research

Research on urban and regional planning is heavily reliant on ethics. When doing research that influences communities, there is a need for accountability, transparency, and integrity. When using surveys or interviews to collect data, informed permission of respondents is crucial. Also, urban planners need to ensure participants know how their data will be utilised; this increases research legitimacy and ensures that participants’ rights are protected.

Urban and rural settlements have diverse sets of people with distinctive cultural and social characteristics; this diversity needs to be respected in urban planning research. For example, urban planning research activities should consider different individuals’, ethnic groups’, religious groups’, and political groups’ viewpoints on any given planning issue.

11.0 Conclusion

Applied research in urban and regional planning ensures that planning decisions are informed by information derived from robust statistical analysis to address real-world challenges such as housing shortages, mobility issues, and environmental sustainability. The research process begins with identifying relevant planning problems and formulating clear research questions, aims, and objectives. A well-structured literature review establishes the theoretical and empirical foundation of the urban planning research or urban planning project, while an appropriate research design ensures coherence in the study.

Research methodology, data collection, and analysis provide the tools to assess urban or rural settlement conditions, measure intervention effectiveness, and generate actionable insights to achieve the intended research or planning aim. Ethical considerations remain central to the research process, ensuring transparency, inclusiveness, and respect for diverse urban and rural settlement populations. Findings must be communicated effectively to stakeholders, policymakers, and communities to facilitate informed decision-making and consensus-building.

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[1] Peter Hall, Mark Tewdwr-Jones, 2019. Urban and Regional Planning, 6^th Edition, Routledge.

[2] Isserman, Andrew M. 2000. Economic base studies for urban and regional planning. In: Lloyd Bodwin and Bishwapriya Sanyal (eds.). The Profession of City Planning. New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

[3] Jacques du Toit. Research Design. In The Routledge Handbook of Planning Research Methods, Elisabete A. Silva, Patsy Healey, Neil Harris, and Pieter Van den Broeck (Eds). Routledge, 2015.

[4] Yanmei Li and Sumei, Zhang Applied Research Methods in Urban and Regional Planning, 20222. Springer.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill. Research methods for business students (9th ed.). Pearson Education, 2023.

[7] Opoku, A., Ahmed, V., & Akotia, J. Choosing an appropriate research methodology and method. In V. Ahmed, A. Opoku, & Z. Aziz (Eds.), Research methodology in the built environment: A selection of case studies. Routledge. 2016.

[8] Xinhao Wang & Rainervom Hofe. Research Methods in Urban and Regional Planning. Springer, 2007.

[9] Li and Zhang, Applied Research Methods. pg. 72

Cities are considered a 'melting pot'; they are complex and have different dimensions, characteristics, and challenges. Cities should be seen beyond their physical spaces; they should also be seen as living systems that reflect the city dwellers' aspirations, challenges, and diversity. Understanding the many dimensions of cities (happy, dream, feminist, competitive, walkable, soft, inclusive, healthy, just, compact, green, rebel, resilient, vulnerable, sharing, slow, and smart) offers a unique perspective on how urban planners, built environment professionals, city enthusiast and related professionals imagine cities.

City dimensions not only focus on the hard aspects of cities but also on the intangibles (social, cultural, emotional, aspirations, and justice, among others). Noteworthy, city dimensions are not isolated; different dimensions of the city explored in this article share some similarities, some address the challenges of other dimensions, and others focus on the shortcomings of the traditional urban planning model. For urban planners, understanding these dimensions of cities presents an opportunity to identify what could be extracted to improve the urban planning arrangement of cities in both developed and developing countries to ensure cities serve their populations.

The increased urban development across the world, particularly in Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria, projected to be the world's third most populated country in 2050 with an estimated 401 million people after India and China,[1] presents an opportunity to explore measures to rethink and improve traditional urban planning which has failed to adequately address the myriad challenges (economic, social, physical, environmental and cultural) of urban settlements. A pertinent question that requires answers by urban planners, city managers, and administrators is: How can cities be planned to ensure equitable access to resources, enhance residents' economic prospects, foster sustainability, enhance inclusiveness, promote justice, enhance well-being and good health, and reduce the level of vulnerability? This article explores the different dimensions of a city, practical examples, and how a good understanding of city dimensions can create opportunities for urban planners in Nigeria and other parts of the world to extract valuable insights to improve the traditional urban planning process and city status.

2.0 City of Many Dimensions

Cities are seen from different perspectives with distinct characteristics; this section describes the many dimensions of cities. Happy Cities prioritises well-being through accessible public spaces and social interaction, premised on the idea that urban environments should improve residents' emotional and psychological health. Hemphill noted Happy City is about the importance of considerate urban planning with which city life can bring residents joy rather than stress[2]. Dream cities represent visionary ideals, focusing on innovative urban practices driven by the ambition to create idealised urban settlements. It should be noted that sometimes, this borders on utopianism. Feminist Cities focus on gender equity, aimed at challenging traditional masculine-focused urban planning "city of men". It emphasises the dominance of men in city planning with the notion "that built environments reflect the societies that construct them"[3]. The focus is a new urban environment, a feminist urban environment.

Competitive Cities thrive on economic growth and innovation, where market forces drive development, and global connectivity attracts talent and business. The city's development is premised on capitalist market competition and innovation principles. The city helps firms and industries create jobs, raise productivity, and increase workers' incomes. Walkable Cities focus on reducing car dependency by designing pedestrian-friendly infrastructures that encourage healthier lifestyles, prioritising walking over vehicular movement. Walking is expected to be useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting, which forms the basis of the General Theory of Walkability[4]. Soft Cities integrate emotional well-being into urban planning and city design, with quiet spaces and community-focused environments that promote relaxation and social connection. It is grounded in human-centred design connecting humans to nature. Sim noted that a soft city is about moving closer, getting together, and connecting people to all aspects of life around them[5]; the focus is on how potentially conflicting aspects of everyday existence can be brought together and connected to deliver a better quality of life. It is a campaign against stricter zoning as utilised in traditional urban planning.

Inclusive Cities ensure equity by providing equal access to resources and opportunities for all genders and classes of people, focusing on addressing urban social segregation[6]. Healthy Cities prioritise clean air, green spaces, and active living, rooted in the belief that urban design directly impacts physical and mental health. The central focal point is clean, safe, high-quality physical environment[7]. Just Cities focuses on fairness and social justice to address established historical inequities by providing equal access to basic services and opportunities. Just City is premised on democracy, equity, and diversity tenets as indicated by Susan Fainstein
[8].

Compact Cities maximise land use with high-density development, integrating different uses within walking distance focused on reducing urban sprawl. Compact cities are characterised by dense development patterns, connected public transportation systems and easy access to local services and employment opportunities[9]. Green Cities emphasise sustainability, integrating eco-friendly practices and environmental conservation into urban planning. Green cities encourage green behaviour, and such city's ecological impact is relatively low[10]. David Harvey coined Rebel Cities to challenge traditional capitalist-based urban planning norms, exploring alternative governance and community-driven approaches to create spaces of resistance and change. The focus of Rebel Cities is to reclaim urban environments for the people with the "right to the city"[11].

Resilient Cities are designed to adapt and recover from shocks with flexible infrastructure and robust risk and vulnerability management systems in place. A resilient city anticipate, plan for, and mitigate the risks and seize the opportunities associated with economic, environmental, and social change[12]. Vulnerable Cities face significant risks, requiring strategic interventions to address climate threats and social inequality. Sharing Cities foster collaboration by promoting the collective use of resources, encouraging a sense of community and reducing waste. Sharing cities share things (cars, tools, and books); sharing services (sites for meetings or sleeping); and sharing activities or experiences (political activity, leisure)[13]. The overall goal is to promote sustainability and build stronger community ties.

Slow Cities embrace a more deliberate pace of life, focusing on sustainability, local culture, and mindful living. Slow is synonymous with 'calm', 'careful', 'cautious', 'deliberate', 'leisurely', 'relaxed', 'measured', 'peaceful' and 'unhurried' and not "lethargic, idle, indolent and slothful". The idea is to trade the speed of the urban transport system and development for healthy city life and sustainability by encouraging the adoption of walking, cycling and increased public transport usage[14]. Smart Cities leverage technology and data science to improve urban systems and enhance the quality of life for residents. Halegoua, in The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series, noted that "in practice, smart cities are places where digital media are strategically integrated as infrastructure and software to collect, analyse, and share data to manage and inform decisions about urban environments and activities"[15].

It should be noted that these dimensions are not isolated; they often overlap, creating complex, multi-faceted urban environments. The overlap could be seen from the exploration in this section; therefore, these could be applied to specific urban environments in a combined form. By understanding the underpinnings of these city dimensions, urban planners, city managers, city administrators, and public policymakers can create sustainable, inclusive, resilient cities that can meet the evolving needs of their populations.

3.0 City Dimensions Examples

The insights from city dimensions can be translated into tangible urban development strategies to address city development challenges, improve quality of life, and promote city sustainability. There are examples where different dimensions of the city have been implemented. Copenhagen, Denmark, is renowned for its extensive cycling infrastructure and green spaces, promoting physical activity and social interaction[16]. Kigali, Rwanda, exhibits principles of walkability, car-free zones, and Nyandungu Eco-Park, which integrates green spaces to enhance public health and well-being[17]. Barcelona, Spain, pioneered the "superblock" concept, reducing car traffic and creating pedestrian-friendly neighbourhoods. Eko Atlantic City, Lagos, Nigeria, incorporates walkable designs to address the congestion issue and improve accessibility.

Medellín, Colombia, transformed disadvantaged neighbourhoods through public transportation improvements and the construction of accessible libraries and parks, addressing social inequities. Johannesburg's Corridors of Freedom connects marginalised communities to economic opportunities with efficient public transit and housing integration[18]. Cape Town, South Africa, exemplifies resilience and sustainability, primarily through its water conservation measures during severe droughts and the development of the Green Point Urban Park, which integrates green spaces into urban life[19]. Nairobi's Karura Forest demonstrates a balance between ecological preservation and urban recreation. Singapore uses data-driven solutions to manage traffic, waste, and energy, and Kigali embraces public Wi-Fi, cashless payments, and digital urban service platforms[20]. These showcase how technology enhances city functionality. In Nairobi, co-working spaces exemplify the city indicating sharing city principles, fostering collaboration and resource efficiency.

The slow city movement (Cittaslow movement) in Italy favours local and traditional cultures, such as the work culture of flextime and telework, to reduce peak transport demand and promote sustainability[21]. Zanzibar integrates slow urbanism by preserving cultural heritage while promoting sustainable tourism. Stockholm, Sweden, represents soft cities, and urban spaces are designed to emphasise harmony. Dubai represents the ideals of dream cities through its variable futuristic urban projects. Nairobi demonstrates feminist city principles through the Flone Initiative, advocating for gender-sensitive transportation systems to improve safety and accessibility for women[22].

These examples, among many other case studies, demonstrate how urban planners, city management, and administrators can adopt one or multiple dimensions of city to address city challenges.

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4.0 City Dimensions Application: Solutions to City Problems

Individual application or integration of different city dimensions to city development and management process issues offer opportunities to enhance city status and create a functional living environment. Adopting the principles indicated in happy, walkable, and healthy city dimensions will help to develop livable city environments with a direct positive impact on the personal health of city dwellers to encourage physical activity and social interaction highlighted the city dimensions. A green city environmental sustainability focus ensures that renewable energy and pedestrian-friendly designs become the cornerstone of city planning. Coupled with a resilient city model that addresses city vulnerability, cities can adequately mitigate environmental risks and withstand climate change impacts.

Compact city designs minimise urban sprawl, preserving natural habitats and promoting efficient resource use, while competitive and smart city principles stimulate economic activity by attracting investments, fostering innovation, and enhancing productivity. Integrating the city model ensures city development based on economic comparative advantage with reduced cost of infrastructure provision due to reduction in the sporadic city development.

Feminist, just, and inclusive city dimensions prioritise equity by addressing systemic barriers (gender, ethnicity, income). These city dimensions ensure equal access to resources and opportunities for all city residents. Applying the dimensions principles will influence public policy on access to city services, utilities and infrastructure to improve city dwellers' experience. Adopting resilient city principles ensures that cities adapt to disasters and that recovery rates improve as urban planners incorporate disaster and climate change resilience features in city development plans (master plan, model city plan, structure plan, etc.). Walkable, compact, and sharing city dimensions principles enhance mobility by reducing reliance on private vehicles and encouraging public transit and shared resources. This has influenced stricter zoning regulations and can further improve city development through the adoption of a more robust city mixed development planning process.

5.0 Conclusion

Integrating different city dimensions offers the opportunity for urban planners to enhance the city planning process, challenge, amend and change the defective traditional-based city planning process. It should be noted that the practical application of these city dimensions models could be impeded by challenges such as paucity of funds, defective or inadequate regulatory framework and dearth of required professionals; this is likely to be more pronounced in some developing countries.

It is therefore suggested to enjoy the benefits offered by the practical applications of different city dimensions principles, measures should be taken to adequately address likely regulatory and funding challenges through a partnership with international development agencies, exploring public-private partnerships and amending or repealing defective urban planning legal framework at the local and national level.

[1] Population Reference Bureau. 2019 World Population Data Sheet. Washington, DC: PRB. www.prb.org/international/geography/nigeria, 2019.

[2] Hemphill, C. Happy City: Sustainability Through Urban Planning. https://www.sustainability.ucsb.edu/blog/sustainability-scoop/happy-city-sustainability-through-urban-planning

[3] Leslie Kern: Feminist City, Verso 2020

[4] Jeff Speck: Walkable city: how downtown can save America, one step at a time. North Point Press, 2012

[5] David Sim: Soft City: Building Density for Everyday Life, 2019

[6] Building the Inclusive City: Theory and practice for confronting urban segregation. Routledge. Nilson A. Espino, 2015

[7] Evelyne de Leeuw, Cities and Health from the Neolithic to the Anthropocene (Chapter 1) in Healthy Cities: The Theory, Policy, and Practice of Value-Based Urban Planning, Springer 2017

[8] Susan S. Fainstein: The Just City, Cornell University Press, 2010.

[9] Cha-Ly Koh & Martín Anzellini: How 'compact cities' guide growth while protecting people and planet, https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/11/compact-cities-guide-growth-protecting-people-and-planet/

[10] Matthew E. Kahn: Green cities: urban growth and the environment, The Brookings Institution, 2006

[11] David Harvey: Rebel cities: from the right to the city to the urban revolution, Verso 2012

[12] Peter Newman, Timothy Beatley, and Heather Boyer: Peter Newman, Timothy Beatley, and Heather Boyer, Overcoming Fossil Fuel Dependence, 2ed

[13] Duncan McLaren and Julian Agyeman: Sharing Cities A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities, MIT Press, 2015

[14] Paul Tranter and Rodney Tolley: Slow Cities Conquering our Speed Addiction for Health and Sustainability, Elsevier 2020.

[15] Germaine R. Halegoua: Smart City. The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series, 2020.

[16] The City of Copenhagen's Bicycle Strategy," Metropolis, accessed January 11, 2025. https://use.metropolis.org/case-studies/cycling-in-copenhagen.

[17] Nyandungu Eco-Park Opens to the Public," Rwanda Development Board, accessed January 11, 2025, https://rdb.rw/nyandungu-eco-park-opens-to-the-public/.

[18] The City of Copenhagen's Bicycle Strategy," Metropolis, accessed January 11, 2025, https://use.metropolis.org/case-studies/cycling-in-copenhagen.

[19] "Corridors of Freedom," City of Johannesburg, accessed January 11, 2025,

https://www.joburg.org.za/.

[20] "Smart Kigali Initiative," Rwanda Development Board, accessed January 11, 2025, https://rdb.rw/smart-kigali/.

[21] Knox, P. L: Creating ordinary places: Slow cities in a fast world. Journal of Urban Design, 10(1), 1–11, 2005

[22] "Creating Gender-Sensitive Public Transport," Flone Initiative, accessed January 11, 2025, https://floneinitiative.org/

Further Readings

Davies, W. K. D. (Ed.). (2015). Theme cities: Solutions for urban problems. New York: Springer.

“Town Planners Seek Implementation Of 30-Yr-Old Urban Planning Law – Daily Trust, December 11, 2022”

“Disasters: FG tasked on implementation of urban, regional planning law - News Agency of Nigeria, December 10, 2022”

“Planners canvass sustainable settlements via effective laws…The Nigerian Institute of Town Planners (NITP) has sought full implementation of the 1992 Nigerian Urban and Regional Law”–Guardian, November 11, 2024”

“Town planners seek implementation of Urban and Regional Planning Law 2004–Nigerian Tribune, October 31, 2021”

“Domestication of Urban and Regional Planning Law vital to liveable environment” - https://tribuneonlineng.com/domestication-of-urban-and-regional-planning-law-vital-to-liveable-environment/”

Town planners want domestication of urban and regional planning law 2004” - https://www.environewsnigeria.com/town-planners-want-domestication-of-urban-and-regional-planning-law-2004”

Introduction

Urban planners in academic, public sector, and professional private practice often call for the implementation of the Nigerian Urban and Regional Planning Law (NURPL) of 1992. However, considering the legal dimension associated with the law given the Supreme Court judgement in 2003, these persistent calls make it imperative to ask: Is there a national urban and regional planning law in Nigeria? This is important as it helps to ascertain if these calls are misplaced or not. It helps to rightly contextualise the implications of the Supreme Court judgement on the national status of urban and regional planning law in Nigeria and the practicability of national implementation of the law.

It is noteworthy and proven that effective urban and regional planning is a cornerstone of sustainable development; local and national economic development, particularly in a rapidly urbanising nation like Nigeria expected to be the third most populated country by 2050, as highlighted by UNFPA1. Expanding cities and growing populations demand a structured approach to land use development, infrastructure provision, and environmental management. A robust urban planning legal framework underpins such efforts; this ensures alignment with broader local and national economic and social objectives. In Nigeria, however, there seems to be a challenge to this framework: the non-implementation of a national urban and regional planning law and the legal bottleneck associated with a nationally inclined urban and regional planning framework shaped by judicial pronouncement. This has seemly created a constitutional restriction to a national focused urban and regional planning legal framework.

Urban and Regional Planning Law: National Status Question

A definte answer to the question of whether Nigeria has a national urban and regional planning law is important. The NURPL of 1992 was introduced to address a gap created due to the operations of an outdated planning law (Town and Country Planning Ordinance of 1946) and to ensure that the urban planning processes in Nigeria keep pace with global practices. The law delineates planning roles for federal, state, and local governments with an associated development plan preparation within a comprehensive planning legal framework. However, the laudable visions of the law were never fully implemented up until the landmark ruling by the justices of the Supreme Court in Attorney-General of Lagos State v. Attorney-General of the Federation 2003.

The case arose when the Lagos State government challenged the Federal Government’s issuance of permits and licences for land use in the state without the state’s planning agency authorisation. The Supreme Court’s ruling identified urban and regional planning as a residual matter under the 1999 Constitution. This categorisation vests legislative authority over planning exclusively with state governments; this therefore renders the national application of the Nigerian Urban Planning Law impracticable except within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). A basic deduction from this is that the Nigerian Urban and Regional Law 1992 has been stripped of its national status. Given this situation, it is pertinent to ask why do urban planning stakeholders incessantly call for the implementation of the law as highlighted by some of the quotations stated in the article introduction?

Supreme Court Decision Implications on National Status of Urban Planning Law

The Supreme Court of Nigeria's judgement highlighted the federalism tenet of the governance system; the justice reaffirmed the autonomy of state governments; they are seen as components of Nigeria, not an appendage of the federal government. The Chief Justice of Nigeria, Mohammed Lawal Uwais, noted, “Each government exists not as an appendage of another government but as an autonomous entity...free from direction by another government.” This principle meant that states hold exclusive land and physical development powers within their territories. Some of the sections of the NURPL were invalidated, particularly sections that impose planning duties on state governments, “These provisions of the Urban and Regional Decree No. 88 of 1992 Act were held to be inconsistent with the CFRN 1999: “S.3; S.1(2); S.4; S.5(b) & (c)”; and every other provision(s) that impose(s) any duty or responsibility on State and Local Government”.2

It should be clearly stated that by invalidating sections of the NURPL that imposed federal directives on states, the judgement highlighted the limitations of federal authority in urban planning across the 36 States in Nigeria except for the FCT. The ruling emphasised that the federal government cannot unilaterally enforce planning laws outside its jurisdiction. This implies the non-existence of national urban and regional planning as envisaged with NURPL and therefore makes the incessant calls for the implementation of NURPL of 1992 by urban planning stakeholders in the academic, public and private sectors as a misplaced agenda. The judicial decision has also had unintended consequences, the fragmentation of urban planning laws and processes in Nigeria as states now bear the sole responsibility for legislative and regulatory action on urban planning matters. It is believed that efforts should rather be channelled to ensure a robust urban planning legal framework at the State level than incessant calls for the implementation of non-implementable law.

Nigerian Urban and Regional Planning Law: Domestication Angle

The Supreme Court's 2003 ruling in Attorney-General of Lagos State v. Attorney-General of the Federation clarified that urban and regional planning fall under residual matters, granting legislative authority to state governments. This decision renders the Nigerian Urban and Regional Planning Law (NURPL) of 1992 inapplicable as a national law. However, there are also some calls for domestication of the NURPL of 1992.

Within the context of this write-up, domestication is seen as states in Nigeria adopting or adapting the NURPL framework within their jurisdictions, though not under the supervision of a federal planning agency as envisaged in NURPL of 1992. It is noteworthy that this approach can provide a unified planning legal framework across the States in Nigeria, however, its success depends on each state's commitment and capacity to implement the urban planning law effectively as the Supreme Court's decision has stripped the federal government of the constitutional authority to enforce a national urban planning law across all states. Therefore, domestication by individual states is a more viable path to pursue than the incessant call for the implementation of NURPL which is practically unachievable based on judicial ruling.3

Advocating for robust state-level planning laws is essential. States should be encouraged to develop comprehensive urban and regional planning legislation tailored to their unique needs while aligning with broader national development goals. This approach promotes state urban planning regulatory autonomy but ensures that planning processes, practices and regulations are in sync across the nation. Though the NURPL of 1992 cannot function as a national law due to constitutional constraints as stated in the judicial ruling; its principles can guide states in formulating their planning laws.

Balancing Federalism and National Cohesion

The Supreme Court of Nigeria's decision on NURPL 19924 reflects the tension between decentralisation and the need for cohesive national strategies. While decentralisation empowers states to tailor planning laws to local realities, it also risks a fragmented regulatory environment that undermines coordinated national rural and urban development efforts as presently the realities with urban planning regulatory framework in Nigeria.

It is suggested that states must embrace their role in urban and regional planning with utmost commitment to integrated national development. Also, developing and implementing robust legal frameworks in the States will require investments in technical capacity, public engagement, and a commitment to transparency that is devoid of political interference in the planning process. It should be noted that the achievement of an effective and global best practice-aligned urban planning regulatory framework in Nigeria hinges on the ability of states to lead the charge, supported by inter-state collaboration and coordination with federal authorities.

Conclusion

It is concluded that contrary to the incessant call for the implementation of the NURPL of 1992, there is no national urban planning legal framework in Nigeria to implement as the NURPL has been invalidated as a federal law. However, the call for domestication, for adaptation of the NURPL framework by the State to engender synchronization of planning regulations framework among the States and also to ensure alignment of State planning regulations framework with national development strategies is a viable path to embark on.

Supreme Court judgement of 2003 affirmed the autonomy of states over urban and regional planning matters in their states; however, this has resulted in a series of challenges particularly the challenge of a decentralised system with attendant non-sync of State planning regulations to national development strategy and neighbour state development strategy. For example, neighbouring States often have contradicting planning regulations which impede smooth urban planning activities most particularly in border settlements in two planning jurisdictions. To address these challenges, states must enact urban planning laws that reflect their unique local needs but also focus on fostering cooperation with neighbouring states and sync with national development efforts.5 Therefore, achieving sustainable rural and urban development in Nigeria will depend on balancing the 36 States’ urban and regional planning regulatory framework autonomy with an intense focus on national development strategy synchronization.

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He noted the passive voices of town planners and challenged town planners, often overlooked in Nigeria’s development discourse, to step into leadership roles, speak up, and ‘be present.

At different times in human history, speeches turn the tide, ignite a positive change, and increase individual and institutional reflections. Ultimately, these speeches help to address systemic issues and challenges. The keynote address by Mr. Raji Fashola, a former governor of Lagos State, at the Lagos Physical Planning Summit 2024 titled “Issues and Prospects of Lagos as Africa’s Model Mega City” could be placed in the class of such speech. Fashola, who has been part of the Lagos State governance system, clearly understands the dynamics of urban planning in the State. He is a former minister of Nigeria under whose ministry the urban planning regulatory body (TOPREC) domiciles at the federal level, which allows him to understand the inner workings of the urban planning profession across Nigeria, particularly in Lagos State. The keynote address could be aptly termed the “light of Fashola.”.

Image 1: Plenary Session at the Summit

Lagos is regarded as Nigeria's commercial hub, the commercial hub in Sub-Sahara Africa, and also one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa; it would have placed fifth based on its GDP if it were a country with a growing population estimated at over 20 million people. Invariably, Lagos is a megacity by its population status. However, the Lagos megacity has divergent development challenges, socio-economic complexities, infrastructural burdens, and environmental demands. As noted by Mr. Raji Fashola, Lagos's megacity status places immense pressure on its urban framework. The evidence of this pressure includes incessant urban traffic congestion, sprawling informal settlements development and uncoordinated fringe development, particularly in the Epe, Ikorodu, and Badagry axes of the state, inadequate waste management even with the innovative introduction of private sector participation, and overstretched public infrastructure and utilities. These highlighted urban development issues in Lagos are not just mere urban inconveniences; they are existential threats to Lagos's function within Nigeria and the West African sub-region. However, Mr. Fashola sees these challenges as opportunities that could be addressed through proactive, data-driven urban planning that anticipates growth rather than being reactive.

Image 2: Taking Note at the Rapporteur Desk

Raji Fashola’s keynote delivery at the Lagos Physical Planning Summit 2024 was both a critique and a rallying cry for the urban planning profession in Lagos State and Nigeria. He noted the passive voices of town planners and challenged town planners, often overlooked in Nigeria’s development discourse, to step into leadership roles, speak up, and ‘be present.’ As it is frequently reiterated in local parlance, “If you are not at the table, you will be on the table.” In this regard, town planners should be at the forefront of sustainable development in Lagos to create a livable Lagos for all. The town planner’s imperativeness to drive the development agenda was emphasized; this is underpinned by the unique ability of the profession to influence land use development, which is connected to other facets of urban life, including investment. This is notable because every investment decision is connected to land. In addition to the passive town planners' voice, other stumbling blocks hinder the profession's progress. These include the fragmentation of town planning agencies, with multiple agencies having overlapping mandates, which leads to inefficiency and bureaucratic inactivity. Fashola’s call for a centralized planning authority could be the key to aligning these agencies’ functions and eliminating duplication.

Image 3: Graphic Depiction of Lagos Urban Skyline

Town planners in Lagos State and Nigeria need to develop robust and sustainable solutions to urban development issues, for though Lagos has some degree of a multi-modal transport system, it is a chaotic mix of minibuses, motorcycles, and private cars that creates daily gridlock that results in loss of economic manhours and decreases productivity. Fashola acknowledged progress, such as the Blue and Red Line rail projects, but called for a broader solution: a more comprehensive, intermodal transport system. In this regard, roads, railways, and waterways must work together, with public transport at the core. For this vision to succeed, Lagos must tackle the root causes of inefficiency, such as poor road design, weak enforcement of traffic laws, and an over-reliance on informal transport. Inclusive policies are also essential. Transport systems must serve not just the wealthy but also the urban poor, who rely on affordable options to navigate the city.

The recurring tragedy of building collapse has become a constant feature of Lagos State. Behind these collapses lies a web of corruption, poor regulation, and weak enforcement of building standards. Fashola pointed to the Lagos State Building Control Agency (LASBCA) as a critical player in reversing this trend. To address the incessant building collapse issues, streamlining the permitting process and reducing illegal developments are necessary first steps. However, there is the challenge of ensuring that housing development is integrated with essential infrastructure. It was noted Lagos generates over 13,000 metric tons of waste daily; this highlights prevailing massive waste management challenges; however, these could be harnessed as opportunities for wealth creation and employment creation through the adoption of modern recycling processes, plants, and sustainable collection systems. Fashola’s call to complete the Epe waste management plant is urgent. Similarly, he emphasized the need for clean water access through projects like the Adiyan Water Works Phase 2, as water and effective waste management systems are vital to public health, environmental sustainability, and improved quality of life.

According to Fashola, “good plans attract funding,” hence Lagos State's ability to raise bonds for urban projects demonstrates its economic potential; regardless of this prospect, public-private partnerships (PPPs) remain underutilised. There is a need to extend public-private partnership initiatives to tourism; Lagos is endowed with different sites with massive tourism potential. Fashola painted a picture of Lagos’s coastline as a global destination, comparable to Cancun or Sharm El Sheikh. To harness the tourism potential of Lagos State, significant investment in infrastructure, security, and marketing is required, comparable to similar investments in Rwanda, Kenya, South Africa, and other notable tourism destinations in Africa. It is imperative to note that the creative industries, comprising of fashion industry, arts, film, and music, among others, hold enormous promise for Lagos State's development. With the right policies and infrastructure, Lagos can harness its youthful, creative population to drive economic growth and global influence.

The proposals outlined in Raji Fashola's keynote proposals are bold, but effective implementation is where the concern lies, considering different previous proposals from different stakeholders in academia, the public sector, the private sector, and international development agencies. It is not out of place to assert that Raji Fashola gave adequate consideration to this; he opined that Lagos must first address institutional inefficiencies, streamline planning agencies, and hold them accountable to deliver results. Equally important is the need for inclusive urban planning. It was noted that planning must prioritize equity and ensure that all residents benefit from development, and sustainability must be at the heart of every decision. As noted by Raji Fashola, town planners must think long-term, integrating renewable energy, green infrastructure, and climate resilience into urban development strategies. Conclusively, Lagos can become a functional hub in Nigeria and the West African subregion by embracing an effective urban governance framework, institutional reform, and an urban planning system focused on equity and sustainability.

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Urban planning is strategic to national, regional and local development. It is noteworthy that urban planning process outcomes have an impact on different segments of national, regional and local development trajectories from economic, health, governance, security, food production and cultural development among others. The city component of the settlement hierarchy represents one of the platforms urban planning ideas, activities and outcomes are accessed. It is estimated that cities contribute more than 80% of the global gross domestic product (GDP), African cities provide the base for productive economic sectors and UN-Habitat’s World Cities Report 2022 asserted that “…in Africa, one can earn as much as 23 per cent more in cities than in rural areas…”, the city becomes a melting pot.

Figure 1: Sporadic Waterfront Development, Lagos Metropolis, Nigeria

Source: Adapted from Guardian Newspaper, Nigeria

African cities are central to the continent's drive towards enduring development. UN-Habitat’s World Cities Report 2022 posited that among other places African cities will “…experience the biggest increase in the city population share in the future”, this increases the potential of African cities and also create challenges such as population congestion; disconnection dues to fragmented development limiting spatial connectivity and high cost of living and transaction impacting urban livability (See Figure 1 & 2). African cities, therefore, require a strategic and purpose-driven development planning process and framework that is tailor-to-fit to prevailing local social, cultural, economic and governance realities.

Figure 2: African Cities Challenges

Source: Lall, Henderson & Venables, 2017

Globally, development planning initiatives incorporate different agenda, models and mindsets, this is based on the fact that development initiatives anywhere are fashioned to consider global good practices and best practices, thus succinct to postulate that no development initiatives exist in a vacuum. The question would then be, to what degree should external or internal forces and ideas drive a city's development agenda, particularly in African cities? This is where the issue of city development planning dilemma arises.

African and Nigeria Urban Development Planning Dilemma

African countries were colonies of some advanced countries and have often taken cues from these countries in different areas, including urban development planning and management. Nigeria has taken most of her urban development planning ideas, models, curriculum and practice framework from Great Britain, the country’s former colonial master. Noteworthy that taking a cue from a working system is not an entirely bad idea, however, this often results in suppression of local ideas, models and prevailing local peculiarities. Furthermore, African and Nigeria’s urban development planning professionals tend towards often engage in the wholesome adoption of global planning ideas to local situations, hence an African planning dilemma. This constitutes a dilemma in the sense that these adoptions of Western utopian planning ideas and practices often contradict the prevailing realities of African settlement dynamics.

In her inaugural lecture, Taibat Lawanson, a professor of Urban Management and Governance noted the conflicts in African cities between urban managers' utopian ideas and the city's inhabitants’ living realities. She observed that city managers' ideas often derived from the Western world and global agenda varied from the lived experiences of African urban settlement dwellers. This situation often hinders the achievement of most development initiatives (development plans and projects), in that most development initiatives' goals at the onset contradict the living realities of the targeted stakeholders, hence, as often noted in local parlance, the development initiatives become “dead on arrival”. The wholesome adoption of global development trends without adequate consideration of local realities makes the development initiative’s outcome unsuitable to city dwellers. It has resulted in city dwellers' unregulated, sporadic and often time detrimental development practices in African and Nigerian cities notably Lagos, Abuja and Port-Harcourt metropolis among others, Lawanson referred to this as “alternative urbanism”.

Beyond the highlights of the African development planning contradictions, the next strategic steps are to highlight what urban development managers and urban development policymakers should do to address this dilemma. This is a question of how can this dilemma be resolved.

Development Planning Dilemma: What to Do

Taking a cue from Professor Taibat Lawanson's inaugural lecture recommendations, African urban planners and development policymakers need to re-examine African cities' development visioning process, together with the re-consideration of adopted models, planning practices and planning education modules, it is thus incumbent to weave local realities into African cities development trajectories to enhance city development planning agenda. To actualise local realities considerations, the African cities development process should be inclusive considering different strata of the city both formal and informal sectors.

Furthermore, in planning for African and Nigerian cities to reflect local realities without totally jettisoning global good practices and best practices the adoption of conceptual ideals of “Cities for People”, “Just City” and “Right to the City”, are imperative. The city dwellers and their prevailing realities are to be made central to every development initiative, different social strata both formal and informal sectors inclusion in the city developmental trajectory should be a top priority. It is important to note that Western world-focused urban planning models are strategic to generating insights for African and Nigerian city development programmes however, the utopian dimension of these models and dimensions that conflicts with African and Nigerian city's prevailing cultural, social and economic realities and diversities needs to be discarded. Conclusively, African and Nigerian cities planning frameworks should be made to be indigenous, this help ensure cities that are truly African and sustainable as noted by Professor Lawanson in her inaugural lecture.

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NOTE

1. Lall, S. V., J. V. Henderson and A. J. Venables (2017) Africa’s Cities: Opening Doors to the World, World Bank, Washington, DC.

2. United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) World Cities Report 2022: Envisaging the Future of Cities.

3. Professor Taibat Lawanson Inaugural Lecture 2023, “Alternative Urbanisms: Beyond Utopian Visions of the ‘Emerging’ African City”. University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria.

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LANDUSE AND TRANSPORTATION PLANNING

Land Use

Land use implies the use a particular is put to. Land use is the various ways in which land and its resources are been utilized by different people, such as farming, mining, building, and grazing. Land use is how, and the purpose for which, human beings employ the land and its resources. Land use involves both how the biophysical attributes of the land are manipulated and the intent underlying that manipulation – the purpose for which the land is used. Land use denotes the human employment of land. There are different classifications of the use of land, these classifications include residential, commercial, industrial, institutional, public, open space, infrastructural, and mixed land uses.

Land Use Planning

Land use planning is a term that is often used interchangeably with town planning, urban planning, regional planning and urban design. Land use planning is used in the allocation of space for different purposes in a local, regional, or national setting. Land use planning is used to encompass the process of managing change in the built and natural environments at different spatial scales to secure sustainable outcomes for communities. It includes both spatial elements, such as the physical design and layout of neighbourhoods, cities and regions, as well as strategic considerations that take account of social, economic, cultural and environmental factors. The development of local and regional statutory plans is an important component of implementing land use planning as an expression of agreed public policy.

Transportation planning:

Transportation is the movement of people, goods and services from one region to another to meet human socio-economic means. Transportation planning is a preparation planning to move/transfer a human, animal or other items from some place to another place. Also, it involves the management and operation of systems and networks designed to facilitate the movement of people and goods from one place to another. It covers multi-modal, motorised and non-motorised movement by road, rail, water and air. Transportation planning is the development of a comprehensive plan for the construction and operation of transportation facilities. It is a cooperative process involving users of the system – the business community, community groups, environmental organisations, commuters, freight operators, and the general public through a proactive public participatory process. This planning will be related to the operation of the highway system, geometry, and the operation of traffic facilities. Functions of transportation planning include: identifying transportation system components; identifying transportation models, dynamics and interplay; achieving efficient management of transportation resources and reducing a negative impact on the traffic system.

Transportation Planning Period

• Short Term (Action Plan): Review matters that can be completed within three years and involve high costs. Example: a programme to optimize the use of existing transportation systems by installing various traffic control devices such as signs and signals.

• Long Term ( ≥ 5 years): This type of planning is more structured and complicated and it must be designed better than short-term planning, Urban transportation planning process involves planning the next 20 to 25 year

Notable Transport Problems

There are diverse transportation issues notable are the urban transportation problems of traffic congestion and parking difficulties; longer commuting; public transport inadequacy; difficulties for non-motorised transport; less public space; environmental impacts and energy consumption; accident and safety; freight distribution issues; poor and inadequate planning; weak intermodal coordination and also worthy of note is the neglect of rural transport system.

Transportation Planning Process

• Situation/Problem definition: Involve all of the activities required to understand the situation that gave rise to the perceived need for transportation improvement.

• Goal and objective: To describe the problem in terms of objectives to be accomplished by the project. Objectives are statements of purpose such as reducing traffic congestion, improving safety etc.

• Studied/Research stage: research and analysis that shows the current demand and the relationship of movement with the environmental demands. Information about the surrounding area, its people and their travel habits may be obtained.

• Forecast stage: formulating the plan, predicting future travel demand and making a recommendation to fulfil traffic demand. A detailed assessment and forecasting in terms of distribution of area, population, employment, economic, social and land use activities.

• Plan evaluation stage to assess whether the proposals made satisfactory demand and provide maximum benefit to the community. To estimate how each of the proposed alternatives would perform under present and future conditions

• Implementation: Once the transportation project/plan has been selected, the project moves into the detailed design phase which each of the components of the facilities is specified

• Monitoring and Review

Figure 1: Transportation Planning Process

Transportation, Transportation  Planning and Landuse Connection

There is a connection between transportation and land use; a relationship exists between the transportation system as a service function and all the other land-use activities in the city. There is no doubt that transportation is a form of land usage, with this there is a vibrant relationship between the two phenomena. Transportation systems and land use patterns influence each other. Roads, transit, and other transportation elements shape land development, throughout history, predominant forms of transportation have had distinct impacts on the form, density and character of the city (city land use and structure). Also, the distribution and types of land use affect travel patterns and transportation facilities. A dispersed pattern of low-density development relies almost exclusively on cars as the primary mode of transportation. Alternatively, denser urban centres can combine different land uses in closer proximity, encouraging: walking, biking, transit and other forms of travel.

The need to examine and also integrate transportation and land use in the development process is necessitated by the growing environmental and social impacts of road networks and motor vehicle use. These impacts are widely seen as being exacerbated by a lack of integration between land use and transport planning. Land use planning and transportation infrastructure need to work together. Communities should plan for the future and be aware of how their land use plans will affect the levels of traffic, appearance, and points of congestion on highways.

Land use is understood to affect transport in some significant ways. Dispersed land use patterns are typically linked with high levels of automobile dependence. Conversely, concentrated land use is more commonly linked with lower levels of car use and higher levels of public transport patronage.

• Higher residential densities and mixed development can lead to shorter car trips and lower levels of car use.

• Traditional neighbourhoods can have shorter trips and lower levels of car use than car-oriented suburbs.

• Higher employment density can lead to greater public transport use.

• Developments close to public transport can generate higher levels of public transport use.

• Traffic volumes and choices of mode of travel are influenced by the location, density, and mixture of land uses.

The effects of transport on land use can also be significant. Litman (2007) identifies both direct and indirect land-use impacts that can result from transport (see table below). Direct impacts result from the amount and location of land used for transport facilities (eg, expanded roads, car parks, railways). Indirect impacts arise from transport decisions which affect land use accessibility. For example, an expanded motorway system that improves access to the urban fringe may encourage automobile dependant development and suburban sprawl. On the other hand, transport decisions that result in improvements to public transport can make urban areas more accessible and reduce car dependency. The relationship between land use and transport decisions can be complex and is influenced by a range of socio-economic factors (eg, car ownership, housing demand, and income).

Furthermore, transportation investments have a significant influence on surrounding land uses. Land use patterns also affect the utilization of transportation facilities. These interrelated effects will occur regardless of whether city officials consider land use in determining their transportation investments. Governments, developers, and citizens can work together to design integrated land use and transportation plans that will help achieve a shared vision for the future. Integrating land use and transportation more effectively can help shape priorities for transportation investments and ensure that new transportation projects and land use plans support and reinforce each other. The above statements can be further improved by the design of newer development patterns displaying a different street layout and land use. This alternative includes an integration of different land uses in closer proximity by promoting higher densities with a mix of land uses. The principles of this form of development include:

• The revitalization of cities and older suburbs with new growth in already-developed areas

• The protection of farms, open spaces, and sensitive environments from new development

• The reduced cost of building and maintaining public infrastructure and services. Compact communities can be less costly to local governments, allowing communities to spend money on other services.

Table 1: Examples of Transport’s Direct and Indirect Impacts On Land Use

Since all human activities cannot be concentrated on one point, there is a need for travel to meet divergent needs for shelter, recreation, work, social interaction, and religious and commercial activities. These activities have varying spatial requirements and levels of compatibility therefore land uses are sorted and located based on ease of access to the urbanites, accessibility and space requirement of the land use and compatibility thus giving rise to the need to overcome what is called the “Friction of distance” through transportation. On the other hand, some land uses and associated activities depend on transport routes for their survival thus the city centre because of its accessibility is characterized by a high density of commercial and other tertiary and quaternary activities.

The city centres usually account for a small percentage of the total urban space yet it has the highest density of vehicular and pedestrian traffic, the highest day-time population and the highest concentration of offices and shops. For instance, it was observed that the centre of Warsaw occupied only about 4.5% of the area of the city yet it had 35.7% of its jobs including 90% of those in finance and insurance, 59% of those in shops, stores and commerce. Journeys to this central area accounted for 51.5% of all passengers carried by public transport and 75% of all vehicular traffic. Land use factors such as density, mix, connectivity and walkability affect how people travel in a community. This information can be used to help achieve transport planning objectives. The set of relationships between transport and land use can be briefly summarized as follows:

• The distribution of land uses, such as residential, industrial or commercial, over the urban area determines the locations of human activities such as living, working, shopping, education or leisure.

• The distribution of human activities in space requires spatial interaction or trips in the transport system to overcome the distance between the locations of activities.

• The distribution of infrastructure in the transport system creates opportunities for spatial interactions and can be measured as accessibility.

• The distribution of accessibility in space co-determines location decisions and so results in changes in the land-use system.

Changes in the intensity of land use as its use result in changes in the traffic associated with it, the nature and intensity of many different activities carried on in the buildings of a city determined how the movement of people and goods is organized. At the same time the facilities for movement, the capacity of roads and public transport undertaking are themselves the determining factors in the location of these activities. Wegener and Furst (1999) have examined the impact of transport policies on land use and the impact of transport policies on transport patterns. An empirical investigation in the city of Ibadan by Fadare (2010) concluded that for efficient transportation system depends on the diligent and careful collection and analysis of a wide range of such relevant data. He noted for the city of Ibadan, for instance, that the travel demand for a private mode of transportation is most likely to increase in the future with growing car ownership, rising population and increasing proportion of households in the medium and low-density areas and that growth in travel demand may be expected to be faster than population and area growth.

TRAFFIC GENERATION, DISTRIBUTION, MODAL SPLIT AND ASSIGNMENT

Conventional sequential processes for estimating transportation demand that is often called the “four-step” urban transport process, are:

• Step 1—Trip Generation (Should I make a trip)

• Step 2—Trip Distribution (Where should I go)

• Step 3—Mode Choice (What mode of transport to use)

• Step 4—Trip Assignment (Which route to use)

The serial nature of the process (trip generation, trip distribution, modal choice, trip assignment) is not meant to imply that the decisions made by travellers are made sequentially rather than simultaneously, nor that the decisions are made in exactly the order implied by the four-step process. For example, the decision of the destination for the trip may follow or be made simultaneously with the choice of mode. Nor is the four-step process meant to imply that the decisions for each trip are made independently of the decisions for other trips. For example, the choice of a mode for a given trip may depend on the choice of mode in the preceding trip.

In four-step travel models, the unit of travel is the “trip,” defined as a person or vehicle travelling from an origin to a destination with no intermediate stops. Since people travelling for different reasons behave differently, four-step models segment trips by trip purpose. The number and definition of trip purposes in a model depend on the types of information the model needs to provide for planning analyses, the characteristics of the region being modelled, and the availability of data with which to obtain model parameters and the inputs to the model. The minimum number of trip purposes in most models is three: home-based work, home-based non-work, and non-home-based. In this report, these three trip purposes are referred to as the “classic three” purposes.

Step 1: Traffic Generation

The first model of travel demand is used in the transportation planning process to predict which zone of the traffic flow. The purpose is to estimate the number of trips of each type that begin or end in each location, based on the amount of activity in an analysis area. In most models, trips are aggregated to a specific unit of geography (e.g., a traffic analysis zone). The estimated number of daily trips will be in the flow unit that is used by the model, which is usually one of the following: vehicle trips; person trips in motorized modes (auto and transit); or person trips by all modes, including both motorized and non-motorized (walking, bicycling) modes. Trip generation models require some explanatory variables that are related to the trip-making behaviour and some functions that estimate the number of trips based on these explanatory variables. Typical variables include the number of households classified by characteristics such as number of persons, number of workers, vehicle availability, income level, and employment by type. The output of trip generation is trip productions and attractions by traffic analysis zone and by purpose.

Step 2: Traffic Distribution

The second model in the transportation planning process is to get a travel/traffic pattern (in/out) in a zone and shows the total traffic in a certain time, distance and cost. Trip distribution addresses the question of how many trips travel between units of geography (e.g., traffic analysis zones). In effect, it links the trip productions and attractions from the trip generation step. Trip distribution requires explanatory variables that are related to the cost (including time) of travel between zones, as well as the amount of trip-making activity in both the origin zone and the destination zone. The outputs of trip distribution are production-attraction zonal trip tables by purpose. The model of external travel estimates the trips that originate or are destined outside the model’s geographic region (the model area). These models include elements of trip generation and distribution, and so the outputs are trip tables representing external travel.

Step 3: Modal Split

This step estimates the number of trips by different types of transport and focuses on public and private transport only. In this step, the trips in the trip distribution step are split into trips by travel mode. The mode definitions vary depending on the types of transportation options offered in the model’s geographic region and the types of planning analyses required, but they can be generally grouped into automobile, transit, and non-motorized modes. Transit modes may be defined by access mode (walk, auto) and/or by service type (local bus, express bus, heavy rail, light rail, commuter rail, etc.). Non-motorized modes, which are not yet included in some models, especially in smaller urban areas, include walking and bicycling. Auto modes are often defined by occupancy levels (drive alone, shared ride with two occupants, etc.). When auto modes are not modelled separately, automobile occupancy factors are used to convert the auto-person trips to vehicle trips before assignment. The outputs of the mode choice process include person trip tables by mode and purpose and auto vehicle trip tables.

Step 4: Route Assignment

The trip assignment is the final step in the four-step process. This step consists of separate highway and transit assignment processes. The highway assignment process routes vehicle trips from the origin-destination trip tables onto paths along the highway network, resulting in traffic volumes on network links by the time of day and, perhaps, vehicle type. Speed and travel time estimates, which reflect the levels of congestion indicated by link volumes, are also output. The transit assignment process routes trips from the transit trip tables onto individual transit routes and links, resulting in transit line volumes and station/ stop boardings and alightings.

Purpose of the Travel Demand Model

This process is important to be in transportation planning to provide a new transportation system framework, improve the existing transportation system; enhance the development of highways and transit systems; determine the number of trips that will use the existing transportation system.  

Travel Demand Model Broad Summary

Individuals or households choose which activities to do during the day and WHETHER TO TRAVEL TO PERFORM THEM (trip generation), and, if so, AT WHICH LOCATIONS TO PERFORM THE ACTIVITIES (trip distribution), when to perform them, WHICH MODES TO USE (modal split), and WHICH ROUTES TO TAKE (trip/route assignment).

METHODS OF TRAFFIC FORECASTING, ORIGIN AND DESTINATION SURVEYS

Forecasting is an educated guess for the future based on objective analysis (to the extent possible) and it should be noted that despite inaccuracy forecasting is better than not forecasting at all. Transportation studies in the planning process focus on Origin and Destination Study (O-D); Traffic Volume Studies; Spot Speed Studies; Travel time and Delay Studies and Parking Studies.

Origin and Destination Study (O-D)

The purpose of O-D is to show the pattern and nature of daily trips made by the residents and to plan for an improved transportation system. The application of O-D includes the determination of traffic flow; determining whether the existing road system is adequate or not and determining the suitable option for a planned transportation system and predicting the traffic pattern in the future.

Traffic Volume Studies

Traffic volume studies focus on the collection of data on the number of vehicles/pedestrians that pass a point during a specified period; to know whether the existing road can accommodate the vehicles that use the road and ensure the smooth movement of vehicles and traffic safety. Application of traffic volume data includes design for road rehabilitation; studying traffic at an intersection; studying traffic control systems; forecasting/predicting traffic volume; studying traffic accidents and analysis of costs-benefits for transport projects.

Spot Speed Studies

This is conducted to estimate the distribution of speeds of vehicles in a stream of traffic at a particular location. Also carried out by recording the speed of a sample of vehicles at a specific location. It should be noted that this is valid only for the traffic and environmental conditions that exist at the time of the study. The application of spot speed data is to establish parameters for traffic operation such as speed zones, speed limits, and passing restrictions; evaluate the effectiveness of traffic control devices such as variable message signs at the work zone; evaluate/determine the adequacy of highway geometric characteristic; evaluate the effect of speed on the highway and determine speed trends.

Travel Time and Delay Studies

A travel time study determines the amount of time required to travel from one point to another on a given route. Information may also be collected on the location, duration, and causes of delays and data also aid the traffic engineer in identifying problems at the transport project location. Application of time and delay studies data help to determine the efficiency of a route concerning its ability to carry traffic; identification of locations with relatively high delay and the causes for delays; determine the traffic times on specific links for use in trip assignment models; performance of economic studies in the evaluation of traffic operation alternative that reduce travel time and to evaluate the change in efficiency and level of service with time.

Parking Studies

The need for parking spaces is usually very great in areas where land is devoted to high-intensity uses such as residential, commercial and industrial activities among others. The adequacy or not of parking spaces for specific land use affects the level of service. The application of parking data is to get valid information for the parking design project and determine the adequacy of parking spaces.

DESIGN OF ROAD ALIGNMENT, SPEEDS, SITE DISTANT LANES AND CARRIAGEWAYS

Classification of Roads

Classification is the process by which streets and highways are grouped into classes, or systems, according to the character of traffic service that they are intended to provide. Roads can be classified in several ways but the two main classifications are “ownership and function”. Ownership refers to who controls the roads, hence we have “Federal Roads”, “State Roads” and “Local Government Roads”. This relates to the control and ownership of the road and who manages the roads. The functional classification is, what role the road performs. There are three highway functional classifications namely: arterial, collector, and local roads. All streets and highways are grouped into one of these classes, depending on the character of the traffic (i.e., local or long distance) and the degree of land access that they allow. These classifications are described in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Roadways Functional Classification

Classification System

Arterials: Provides the highest level of service at the greatest speed for the longest uninterrupted distance, with some degree of access control. Arterials can either be principal or minor both in rural and urban roads. An example of rural and urban arterial roads is shown in plates 1 and 2.

Collectors: Provides a less highly developed level of service at a lower speed for shorter distances by collecting traffic from local roads and connecting them with arterials. Subclasses of collectors are:

• Major Collectors: Connect small towns to large towns not served by arterials, link entities with nearby arterials, urban areas

• Minor Collectors: Serve remaining small towns, link-local traffic generators with rural areas

• Local: Consists of all roads not defined as arterials or collectors; primarily provides access to land with little or no through movement plates 5 and 6 showing an example of local and urban local roads.

Geometric Design of Road

The geometric design of roads is the most important aspect of road construction. The geometric design of a road provides maximum efficiency in traffic operation with maximum safety at a reasonable cost (Gupta and Gupta, 2010). Geometric design is the arrangement of the visible elements of roads such as alignments, grades, sight distances, slopes etc.

Alignments

Alignments consist of both horizontal and vertical alignments. The horizontal alignment of a road must be carefully chosen to have a good correlation with the vertical alignment and the elements such as radius of curvature, design speed, lane width, details of superelevation and adequate sight distance must be adequately considered.

• Horizontal Alignments: The primary control elements used to locate a highway in a horizontal plane. Horizontal alignment defines the tangents and curvature of the highway.

• Vertical Alignment: The primary control elements used to locate a highway in a vertical plane. It is defined by the profile grade.

Sight Distance

Sight distance the ability to see ahead, is one of the utmost importance in the safe and efficient operations of vehicles on a road. Sight distances of sufficient length must be provided so that drivers can control the operation o their vehicles to avoid striking n unexpected objects on the travelled way. Two sight distances are considered in the design: passing sight distance (PSD) and stopping sight distance (SSD).

• Stopping Sight Distance: Is the minimum sight distance required for a driver of a vehicle travelling at a given speed to bring his vehicle to a stop after an object on the road becomes visible, stopping sight distance is to be provided at all points on multilane and 2-lane roads. It is also provided for all elements of interchanges and intersections at grade, including private road connections.

• Passing Sight Distance: This is the minimum sight distance that must be available to enable the driver of one vehicle to pass another vehicle, safety and comfortably, without interfering with the speed of an oncoming vehicle travelling at the design speed. Passing sight distance is considered only on a two-lane road. Table 5 shows the minimum standards for sight distances related to design speed.

Design Vehicles Selection

The physical characteristics of vehicles and the proportions of various size vehicles using the roads are positive control in geometric design. Design vehicles are selected to represent various classes of vehicles operating on the road (See Table 6). The vehicle type which should be used in the design for normal operations shall represent at least 60% of the total flow. Design of intersections, however including ramps and turnarounds shall allow for the largest vehicle expected to negotiate the designated turns, especially where the pavement is kerbed.

Design Speed

Design speed is a speed selected to ensure efficient vehicle operation having regard to the influence of the physical features of the road an example of design speed used in Nigeria is shown in Table 7. Design speed is the maximum safe speed that can be maintained over a specified section of the road when conditions are so favourable that the design features of the road govern. Vertical and horizontal alignment, sight distance, and superelevation will vary appreciably with design speed. Such features as pavement width, shoulder width, and side clearance are usually not affected. The geometric standard should be established to obtain safe stopping or passing sight distance and to secure the lowest gradient differential or longest vertical curve possible within economic feasibility.

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MASS TRANSIT IN URBAN CENTRES

Transportation is the engine that drives the growth and development of people and countries. Mass transit provides the channel through which people, goods and ideas are adequately moved from one location to another. Mass transportation is the movement of a large number of people, goods and services from one place to another in one vehicle. It is therefore inevitable for the socio-economic and socio-cultural integration of nations. Mass transport is characterised by three values and principles namely, equity, accessibility and mobility. The federal government of Nigeria introduced the policy of the mass transit programme in 1988 to lay the foundation for moderately organized mass transit in Nigeria. With the introduction of this policy, the goal of the public mass transit system changed from revenue generation to a government intervention programme aimed at alleviating the socioeconomic problems of the citizenry.

Mass transit, also called mass transportation, or public transportation, is the movement of people within urban areas using high-capacity modes such as buses and trains. The essential feature of mass transportation is that many people are carried in the same vehicle (e.g., buses) or collection of attached vehicles (trains). This makes it possible to move people in the same travel corridor with greater efficiency, which can lead to lower costs to carry each person or—because the costs are shared by many people—the opportunity to spend more money to provide better service or both.

Mass transit systems may be owned and controlled by individuals, private organisations or the public sector (government agencies). The importance of mass transportation is in supporting the mass movement in urban centres. The need for travel is derived because people rarely travel for the sake of travel itself; they travel to meet the primary needs of daily life. Mobility is an essential feature of urban life, for it defines the ability to participate in modern society. Mass transportation systems are varied and have different features. Nevertheless, whether they are land-based (rail or road-based mass transit systems) or water-based, they have a role to play in very large cities, largely because they are often less congesting, have large capacities to move passengers efficiently and are relatively better users of ‘transport space’ (road, tracks etc). Furthermore, mass transit provides a cheap means of transportation compared to private transportation; provides an opportunity to move large numbers of people; reduces the rate of urban traffic congestion and helps ensure the economic success of areas by making it easier and less costly for large numbers of workers and shoppers to enter and leave.

PREPARATION OF A CIRCULATION PLAN/TRANSPORTATION AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE COMPREHENSIVE URBAN DEVELOPMENT PLAN

Concept of Comprehensive Urban Plan

Comprehensive Urban Plan is a comprehensive plan that integrates various aspects of a settlement such as housing, transportation, infrastructure etc. Multidisciplinary: it encompasses various dimension as social, economic, environmental, engineering, architecture etc.; It is a long-term development agenda ad document with a vision for future development. Comprehensive Urban Plan focuses on the rational and most optimal use of land. More importantly, It focuses on efficient uses of resources to meet the present and future requirements of a given settlement. Other areas of consideration for a comprehensive urban plan include environmental sustainability; inclusive planning; affordability; restrictions on ecologically sensitive areas and heritage sites; focus on ensuring a balanced growth of the city and efficient distribution of facilities and, infrastructure.

A comprehensive urban development plan is a plan that intends to address the present challenges of an urban area and also provides for future project needs of the urban area. The comprehensive plan is a long-term planning document that provides a conceptual layout to guide future growth and development of the urban area for example Ikeja, Ilorin, Ado-Ekiki etc. The plan focuses on areas such as housing, health, industry, commercial development and also circulation transportation, so a typical comprehensive development plan as circulation/transportation has a sub-component.

Circulation Plan

The circulation plan guides the continued development of the circulation system to support the planned growth of a settlement. The purpose of the Circulation Plan is to provide a safe, efficient and adequate circulation system for the City. A typical circulation plan focuses on reducing traffic congestion, easing commuting, improving road safety, and maintaining an efficient and effective transportation system. A typical content of a circulation plan will include:

• Table of contents

• Figures

• Tables

• Executive Summary

• Chapter X: Circulation Plan Background

• Chapter X: Circulation Plan Aim and Objectives

• Chapter X: Existing Circulation Description

• Chapter X: Plan Elements

• Chapter X: Project Environment Description

• Chapter X: Traffic and Transportation System

• Chapter X Transportation, Traffic and Parking Assessment (Road Network, Traffic Flow Characteristics, Traffic Volume Count and Analysis, Origin-Destination Survey, Existing Parking Situation)

• Chapter X: Proposed Circulation Plan

• Chapter X: Transportation Management Plan Chapter X: Phasing Plan

• Chapter X: Conclusion Chapter X: Recommendation

• References

• Appendices

Note: A circulation plan/transport plan could be included in the comprehensive plan and it could also stand on its own as an individual project and report.

FORMULATION OF TRANSPORTATION POLICIES IN NIGERIA

Policy

A policy can be conceptualized as a set of ideas, guidelines, goals, aspirations, and visions for a better society. Policies are frequently, though not exclusively, incorporated into laws and other legal instruments that serve as a framework for developing planning interventions.

Transport Policy Definition and Overview

Transport policies can be defined as standards, principles, and rules formulated or adopted by the government to accomplish its long-term goals of an efficient transport system. Tolly and Turton, (1995) conceive of transport policy as the process of regulating and controlling the provision of transport to facilitate the efficient operation of the economic, social and political life of any country at the lowest social cost. Transport policy forms the basis for the planning and direction of growth of the transport system and the extent to which the planning and provision of transport provide appropriate solutions. He argues that the approaches to transport provision as well as the efficiency of the transport system are directly related to the nature and dynamism of the transport policy of a country.

Transport policies deal with the development of a set of constructs and propositions that are established to achieve objectives relating to social, economic and environmental development, and the functioning and performance of the transport system. Transport policy can be undertaken by both private and public sectors. Governments, most times are involved in the policy process since they either own or manage many components of the transport system. On the other hand, many transport systems, such as maritime and air transportation, are privately owned and thus have much leverage in the policy process through their asset allocation decisions, which reflects in new public transport policy paradigms.

The public transport policies also serve as a regulatory framework which guides all activities in the sector. The need to develop a national transport policy that is responsible for the needs of the country and its people is essential in developing countries like Nigeria. Transport policy provides the guidelines for planning, development, coordination, management, supervision and regulation of the transport sector with its fundamental goal of developing an adequate, safe, environmentally sound, efficient and affordable integrated transport system within the framework of a progressive and competitive market economy.

The National transport policy by helping to explain the Government’s decisions and actions in the transport sector by espousing the goals and principles that guide it; identifying existing gaps and short-comings and how to address them; showing how actions in the different modes are linked in pursuit of common goals; providing the basis for a system of monitoring and accountability; and Ensuring consistency in the application of policy principles across all modes and in pursuit of different objectives and a good public transport policy will help facilitate financial assistance towards improving urban mobility.

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Transport Policy Benefits

The benefits of public transportation policies include the following:

• It allows the standards by which the transport sector is governed to be set down, comprehended and followed by everyone involved,

• Common strategies are utilized for everyone involved in the public transportation sector and in this way expanding operational proficiency,

• Control frameworks are set up in the operational environment inside the public transport sector,

• The transportation policies represent the techniques needed to get the maximum benefits in the minimum time,

• They are important to train newcomers to the public transport sector and to keep other members completely informed of the agreed policies.

• Promote a high-quality urban transport system

• Improve productivity and economic growth

• Encourage increased accessibility which in turn influences prices and land use

• Improve the environment in the city

The Relevance of Transport Policy

Transport policies arise because of the importance of transport in virtually every aspect of the economic, social and political activities of nations. Transport is taken by governments of all types, as a vital factor in economic development. Transport is seen as a key mechanism in promoting, developing and shaping the national economy. Governments also seek to promote transportation infrastructure and services where private capital investment or services may not be forthcoming.

Transport Policy Formulation

While formulating public transport policies, it is important to consider every facet of the transportation unit. The principle areas to be covered in the transportation unit incorporate the following; introduction which gives the reason and the decision behind the formulation of the policies, the transportation administration, the instruments and the language utilized, the rules governing everyday operations, procedures and controls governing the transport sector, established and systematized thought on different theme which have been acknowledged for growth and development in the public transport.

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Transportation policy dimension

• Social aspects: improve the social aspects as can be done safely and comfortably

• Economic aspects: with the existing variety of travel patterns, activities such as employment, population and household income will be increased.

• Physical aspects: create an efficient transportation system because there are various modes of transportation introduced

Nigeria’s Transport Policy

The Nigerian Public Transport policy observed the dominance of the road in the transport sector of the country and the increased demand for road transport. The policy likewise acknowledges the large number of small administrators in the sector because of the high costs of vehicles, their poor condition of upkeep and the over-burdening characteristics of the vehicles all of which constitute a different hazard to well-being on and off the roads.

Public transport policies in the past had likewise hampered the formulation, development, regulation, control and implementation of urban transport guidelines. These have to some degree made the idea of the policy difficult and the appraisal of the policy document incomprehensible before implementation. Moreover, the process of formulation of the policy alienates the stakeholders, particularly private sector operators of the transport system as well as the ordinary transport users or riders. The fact that there was little consultation with stakeholders made the previous efforts of putting together a national transport policy on exercises destined for the shelves. Closely associated with the problem of inadequate data and poor consultation, the approaches of government in the evolution of transport policy are the inability of even government-stated policy statements to change over time.

Nigeria’s National Transport Policies

• 1965 Statement of Policy on Transport

• 1993 National Transport Policy

• 2002 Master Plan for Integrated

• 2003 Draft Transport Policy

• 2008 National Transport Policy

• 2010 Draft Transport policy

Transport Policy Implementation in Nigeria

Examples of transport policy implementation include:

• The urban mass transit program/ initiative of the federal government,

• The shipping policy initiative of the government

• Reforms in the transport sector, namely:

• Road sector reforms

• Port sector reforms

• Rail sector reforms

• Reforms in the inland waterways sector

• The policy on public-private partnership {PPP}

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Sustainable Transport Policies

Sustainable transport policies are easily defined, very practical in scope, of the greatest benefit to the poorest sections of society and relatively cheap to implement. Their defining characteristics are a clear commitment to targets and objectives to be achieved over clear time scales. For most Nigerian cities relevant targets and objectives would include:

• reducing air pollution and noise levels;

• increasing the space, security and comfort for pedestrians and cyclists;

• reducing the number of cars and lorries on the roads and increasing the proportion of journeys accomplished by walking and cycling;

• developing and improving those modes of transport that are zero pollution on the streets;

• establishing safe routes to schools, hospitals, workplaces, etc;

• reducing road traffic accidents;

• reducing total energy consumption;

• increasing the amount of green space in urban areas;

• increasing the number of trees.

For Nigeria to have a sustainable transportation system, certain fundamental issues need to be addressed.

• The need for continuous investment in the transport sector

• More involvement of the private sector - guided privatization

• Need to evolve a dynamic transport policy and its effective administration.

• Need for appropriately integrated multimodality

• Balance in transport and environment development.

• Transport and land use planning consciousness.

• Increased capacity building in transportation

• Efficient and coordinated institutional arrangement

• A concerted effort should be made to integrate both rural and urban road networks in Nigeria.

• Transport development and consequences should be accorded the right priority for a system to evolve.

• Successful solutions have been based on awareness of the necessity to protect the city, not only among decision-makers and citizens but also among businessmen and other interest groups.

• Well-planned and coordinated measures step-by-step are necessary for solving the traffic and environmental problems in cities.

• The good aesthetic design of street closures, pedestrian streets, stops etc e.g. tree planting are important to improve the city environment

• Continuous follow-up studies and environmental impact assessments are necessary to correct and also extend the measures undertaken.

• Future steps for making cities more livable and adaptable to sustainable development will be directed to reduce car dependency through more comprehensive land use and traffic planning and offering alternative transport opportunities. Telematics can play a role in giving advanced information on transport alternatives and existing traffic conditions.

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Lecture note prepared by Tpl. Adeleke Akinpelu, MNIM, AITD, MNES, MGARP, RTP, the principal consultant at SMC Professional Services, Lagos Nigeria. The note is for the Nigerian Institute of Town Planners Professional Examination 700 level. In most cases, references and citations are omitted. Enjoy your reading and for clarification please reach out through smcinsights@gmail.com or smcprofessionalservices@gmail.com

Outline

1. The nature of planning, procedural and substantive theories in planning

2. The planning process

3. Planning modes and traditions in both capitalist and socialist economies.

4. Citizen’s participation and evaluation in the planning process

5. Social science contribution to the development of planning theory

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1.0       THE NATURE OF PLANNING, PROCEDURAL AND SUBSTANTIVE THEORIES IN PLANNING

The Nature of Planning

Planning is a process of intervention to alter the existing course of events. It refers to a wide range of systematic activities designed to ensure that desired goals are achieved in the future. Modern planning originated in the late 19th century when the rapid growth of cities following the industrial revolution led to a vast of urban problems, such as inadequate sanitation, water supply, transportation, and housing.

Planning is a process, procedure, or method for setting goals, identifying and assessing options, and developing strategies for achieving desired options. Also, planning could be seen as an orderly sequence of activities that will lead to the achievement of a stated goal or goal. The nature of planning includes forward-looking, and reaching an agreement. The primary functions of planning are: to improve the efficiency of outcomes; enhance social welfare; widen the range of choice and enrich civic engagement and governance.

Theory

A theory is an explanation of why particular events occur.

Planning Theory

·       A well-defined planning theory is an essential component of the planning profession.

·       Planning theory is the body of scientific concepts, definitions, behavioural relationships, and assumptions that define the body of knowledge of urban planning.

·       Planning Theory is the body of scientific concepts, definitions, behavioural relationships, and assumptions that define the body of knowledge of urban planning. John Friedmann defines planning theory as a systematic reflection on actual existing planning practices in context with the city or region or country.

·       Planning theory can help to solve problems on three different levels: understanding planning (agencies, procedures); the planner’s orientation of himself as a planner. The involved agencies and their operations.

·       Planning practice needs a theory of what planning is or should be. According to Alexander, viewing generic planning theories as ideologies offer the potential for some insight into addressing the issue of their relevance for planning practices.

Andreas Faludi (1973) has argued distinguishing between the understanding of environmental planning concerned on the one hand (‘SUBSTANTIVE’ THEORY) and the understanding of the procedures and process of planning on the other hand (‘PROCEDURAL’ THEORY).

Procedural Planning Theories (Theory of Planning)

·       Can be seen as planners understanding themselves and how they operate the designing of planning agencies and the way they operate.

·       Is concerned with the process by which decisions are taken.

·       Is concerned with why we do what we do as urban and regional planners. This has to do with how might planners act.

·       The theory of Planning’ helps planners to understand themselves and their operating methods.

Rational Comprehensive Planning/Synoptic Planning Theory: Have the following features: goal-setting, identification of policy alternatives, evaluation of means against ends, implementation of the preferred alternative, multiple iterations, feedback loops, and sub-processes. Synoptic planning typically looks at problems from a systems viewpoint, using conceptual or mathematical models relating ends (objectives) to means (resources and constraints), with heavy reliance on numbers and quantitative analysis. Rational theory believed that a planner is an expert capable of designing for and coping with complex urban conditions by using specialized Knowledge, techniques and technologies in support of well-structured decision processes. Comprehensive planning theory entails comprehensiveness, considers all alternatives to all objectives and extensive definition of a problem. An early critique held that the synoptic planning model was unachievable in reality, as true comprehensiveness would require endless amounts of time and money. Rational planning theory led to the engagement of process (planning process) in addressing planning issues.

Strengths

·       it provides a clear, straightforward method of formulating policy and programs, and is useful at many different levels of planning;

·       It also meshes well with the use of indicators to measure sustainability problems and the effectiveness of policies;

·       It appears logical to many members of the public, tends to be respected by local political leaders, and can be designed to offer opportunities for public involvement

·       Objectivity represents the greatest strength of the comprehensive approach which results in a more convincing solution because of the consideration of the widest variety of variables.

Criticism

·       Decisions are taken in ignorance of the future but rather based on assumptions.

·       The process places power and trust in the hands of the planner who is seen as an expert bearing all the information required to solve problems.

·       Ignores public consultation which is paramount in the decision-making process.

·       It is difficult to have each person agree on common goals.

·       No matter how rational we would hope to be there is no way anyone can gather all the facts and take into account every consideration.

·       The need to develop alternative approaches and critics censor comprehensive rationality. The nature of the problems and the complexity of the environment would generate an unmanageable number of alternatives to consider.

·       Only a short-term future can be predicted with confidence.

·       Rational comprehensive planning also requires a great deal of time.

·       Lack of political commitment to implement policies challenges the planner’s agenda of rationality in planning.

·       The approach is often seen as overly expert-driven rather than letting public concerns drive the planning process.

·       Relying on quantitative analysis of data rather than taking into account less tangible qualitative elements of social, human and environmental factors.

·       Also, public inputs, which determine the success of the plans, may be ignored by the comprehensive approach because of its great reliance on quantification technology.

Despite the criticism levelled against the rational comprehensive approach to planning, the approach has taken root in most countries as the paradigm of choice and is the most utilised approach in decision–making. For it has the goal of maximising efficiency by picking the best alternative based on specific criteria and also provides a structured way to address a problem and arrive at a solution. However, to realise total success, it is important to incorporate political interactions and public participation in the planning and decision-making process.

Disjointed Incremental Planning Theory: (also referred to as the Science of Muddling Through): Formulated by Lindblom in 1959, it dismissed rational-comprehensive planning as an impractical ideal. It is believed that planning is less scientific and comprehensive and more politically interactive and experiential. In 1959, Charles Lindblom published the article "The Science of Muddling Through", which first introduces the concept of incrementalism. Lindblom argues that people incrementally make their plans and decisions. He argues that people accomplish goals through a series of successive, limited comparisons. One of the major points is that problems are solved through a series of policies at different points in time, rather than all at once. The planning process is focused on solving existing problems rather than on achieving a future desired state.

Incremental planning developed in reaction to the criticism of Rational Comprehensive planning. General criticisms were: failure to identify the cognitive ability of decision-makers; the nature of social values within the perspective, the separation of ends and means, a general public interest as opposed to pluralist interests; subjectivity toward central control in the definition of the problem, the valuation of alternatives and implementation of decisions; and the reductionist nature of epistemology. Incremental planning could be referred to as ‘partisan mutual adjustment’ or ‘disjointed incrementalism’. The development of incremental planning could be said to be initiated in reaction to rational comprehensive planning. It states that policy and policy decisions should be addressed through familiar institutions in a free market and democratic political economy (Hudson, 1979). The incremental planning approach claims that in everyday life rational decision-making is not possible. Policymakers are constrained by incomplete information, time pressure, political forces and cognitive limitations (e.g., problems are too complex to simplify) (Howlett 2009). Incrementalists point out that the actual decision-making process is much more complicated, chaotic, and only marginally driven by larger policy goals. In his article on

The incrementalist critique of rational planning gained wide circulation by the early 1960s. Political scientist Charles Lindblom (1959) suggested that comprehensive or synoptic planning, as he called it was unachievable and out of step with political realities. He argued that political leaders cannot agree on goals in advance, as the rational model requires. They prefer to choose policies and goals at the same time. He thought that the rational model's preoccupation with the comparison of all possible alternatives and their comprehensive assessment of all measures of performance exceeds human abilities. The relationship between science and policy choice was oblique at best. The real measure of "good policy" is whether policymakers agree on it. Lindblom's alternative, incrementalism, calls for the simultaneous selection of goals and policies, consideration of alternatives only marginally different from the status quo, examination of simplified, limited comparisons among the alternatives, and the preference for results of social experimentation over theory as the basis of analysis.

But in the late 1970s, Lindblom argued that he had been misunderstood. Incrementalism had three meanings planners had blurred:

·       strategic analysis, or any attempt to simplify complex policy problems;

·       disjointed incrementalism or analysis carried out without the advance determination of goals, with few alternatives considered, and with modest complexity of data;

·       simple incrementalism, where the alternatives considered are only marginally different from the status quo.

Planning had embraced the third meaning, simple incrementalism, while Lindblom claimed he had been arguing for disjointed incrementalism. Altshuler (1965) examined the experience of land and transportation planning in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region. He found that planners were seldom able to achieve their objectives in scientific aspirations. Their claims of comprehensiveness were not backed up by reality. Decision-makers often ignored their recommendations in favour of the wishes of politically connected stakeholders. Organizers of citizen input to planning processes railed against the often-futile nature of public participation (Arnstein, 1969). Marxist-inspired analyses of planning outcomes argued that planners were the handmaidens of downtown development interests and seldom really addressed meaningful policy choices (Kravitz 1970; Goodman 1971).

Mixed Scanning Planning Theory: Amitai Etzioni's (1967) middle-range bridge was an effort to reconcile rational planning with incrementalism. Combines the positive of synoptic planning theory with positive features of incrementalism. Users of this theory integrate the characteristics of the rational model and incremental (Hanekom, 1987) first by reviewing the overall policy and second by concentrating on a specific need, policy result or policy impact. The approach was developed in contrast to rationalist models of decision-making and incrementalism. Rationalist approaches were held to be Utopian because actors cannot command the resources and capabilities rational comprehensive planning theory requires. Incrementalism was shown to overlook opportunities for significant innovations and to ignore the empirical fact that incremental decisions are often, in effect, made within the context of fundamental decisions.

Amitai Etzioni introduced the concept of mixed scanning as a compromise between rational and incremental planning theories. Mixed scanning views planning decisions at two levels: the big picture and the small picture, Etzioni argues that fundamental policy-shaping decisions should be based on a more careful rational analysis of alternatives. Implementation decisions should use an incremental approach.

Rationalistic models tend to posit a high degree of control over the decision-making situation on the part of the decision-maker. The incrementalist approach presents an alternative model, referred to as the art of “muddling through,” which assumes much less command over the environment. Finally, the article outlines a third approach to social decision-making which, in combining elements of both earlier approaches, is neither as utopian in its assumptions as the first model nor as conservative as the second. For reasons which will become evident, this third approach is referred to as mixed scanning.

Elements Defining Mixed Scanning:

·       Mixed scanning is best defined as an approach to decision-making that incorporates both rational-comprehensive decision-making and incremental decision-making.

·       Rational-comprehensive believes that problems can be easily identified and solved. It requires a vast amount of information to be an effective approach to decision-making.

·       Incremental decision-making believes in a remedial approach to making decisions, amongst other things.

·       While both of these decision-making processes have benefits, they also have several distinct disadvantages that must be considered.

·       It is because of the belief that the above decision-making processes are too flawed to be completely effective that mixed scanning was created.

·       Mixed scanning was developed by sociologist Amitai Etzioni.

·       Etzioni found flaws in rational-comprehensive and incremental and chose to develop an approach to making decisions that incorporated both fundamental and incremental decisions.

·       The broad-based analysis is utilized in mixed scanning. However, there are other situations in which mixed scanning will utilize in-depth analysis instead.

·       One of the most intriguing components of mixed scanning is how it takes into account the varying capacities of decision-making individuals.

Advocacy Planning Theory: Advocacy planning formulated in the 1960s by lawyer and planning scholar Paul Davidoff represents a departure from scientific, objective, or rational planning. It is premised upon the inclusion of the different interests involved in the planning process itself. The advocacy planning movement grew up in the sixties rooted in adversary procedures modelled upon the legal profession and usually applied to defending the interests of the weak against strong-community groups, environmental causes, the poor, and the disenfranchised against the established powers of business and government. Advocacy planning challenged the traditional view of “public interest”, Applied to defending the interest of weak or poorly represented groups, such as low-income, environmental activists, minorities, the disadvantaged etc. and a direct result of this theory: increasing requirements for environmental, social, and financial impact reports to accompany large scale project proposals. Advocacy planning gives voice to less-represented groups and encourages an open planning process.

It concerns itself with ensuring that all people are equally represented in the planning process by advocating for the interests of the underprivileged and seeking social change. Public participation is a central tenet of this model. A plurality of public interests is assumed, and the role of the planner is essentially the one of a facilitator who either advocates directly for underrepresented groups or encourages them to become part of the process.

Advocacy planning is vague in terms of governance. It is primarily concerned with client-centred and social welfare. It does not address the changes it proposes in the structure of planning practice and the interaction between institutions and operating procedures for implementation (Healey et al., 1982). Advocacy planning initiated the challenge to traditional planning by creating awareness of a pluralist public interest as opposed to a unitary public interest (Peattie, 1968). The planner’s role was seen as being more political than the traditional view of planning in his calling and focus on the ‘many interests groups and their involvement in planning and the development of the public (Taylor, 1998).

Advocacy planning criticises ‘physical’ planning or traditional planning as being one-sided. Planners need to be familiar with and understand socio-economic problems, their causes and solutions (Davidhoff, 1965). Advocacy planning emphasises that planning should be able to aid the needy by the transformation in government structure, which would allow the planner to influence policy with regards to planning for the city environment with particular attention on the poor and disadvantaged and enable their involvement in the planning process. It is largely influenced by a judicial perspective and theories of economics. The law is used in comparison to advocate for those who cannot fend for themselves, because of their status. Economics is used to explain the unequal division of resources and that there should be a redistribution of these resources.

Criticism

·       Advocate planners tend to be demographically quite different from the residents they served.

·       Advocacy planning seemed to raise expectations that could not be met in those communities.

·       It seemed to lull the residents themselves into lowered political action profiles as a result of the belief that the city was working on their behalf.

·       Victories were often won at the great personal expense on the part of the planners involved. More often,

·       Political naïve – no change in the distribution of power

·       Highly influenced by the political climate

Transactive Planning Theory: a radical break from previous models. Instead of considering public participation as a method that would be used in addition to the normal training planning process, participation was a central goal. For the first time, the public was encouraged to take on an active role in the policy-setting process, while the planner took on the role of a distributor of information and a feedback source. Transactive planning focuses on interpersonal dialogue that develops ideas, which will be turned into action. One of the central goals is mutual learning where the planner gets more information on the community and citizens become more educated about planning issues.

Transactive planning also refers to the evolution of decentralized planning institutions that help people take increasing control over the social processes that govern their welfare. Planning is not seen as an operation separated from other forms of social action, but rather as a process embedded in the continual evolution of ideas validated through action. Plans are evaluated not merely in terms of what they do for people through the delivery of goods and services, but in terms of the plans’ effect on people-on their dignity and sense of effectiveness, their values and behaviour, their capacity for growth through cooperation, and their spirit of generosity. By contrast, incremental planning adheres more closely to the economic logic of individuals pursuing their self-interest.

Transactive planning refers to interpersonal discourse through a process of mutual learning, which is enabled through decentralised planning institutions. This would promote the contribution of people over social processes that govern their welfare (Friedmann, 1973). During the early 70s, John Friedmann proposed a new way of thinking about planning as opposed to rational decision-making planning. He proposed planning as social learning, which would involve dialogue as a basis for mutual learning between planners and client groups. It aimed to be one of innovation and action, involving questions of what values should guide practice and what strategies and how to develop community participation in planning. Emphasising dialogue and the development of trusting interpersonal relationships, which would focus more on face-to-face interpersonal dialogue with the people affected by decisions.

Friedmann’s proposed a mixed method of scientific and personal knowledge through mutual learning in discourse. Knowledge was connected to action with the purpose to create a learning society of people working together. It calls for the development of community-based institutions which are traditionally overshadowed by centralised and bureaucratically organized agencies of government and corporate activities. The transactive planning approach revolves around the experience of people’s lives, which should inform policy issues.

Communicative Planning Theory: Planners around the nation have moved towards more open planning that includes a much more intensive citizen participation process. This theory recognizes that planning operates within the realm of politics and that it contains a variety of stakeholder interests. Planners can provide the stakeholders with information and bring people together to discuss the issues.

The Communicative Planning Theory claimed to have constituted a revolutionary shift in the world of planning theory. The idea of the communicative planning process is unconstrained dialogue; a democratic craft created on an argumentative platform within the planning practice. It should foster community empowerment and recognise differences, diversity and disadvantages which have implications for the development of balanced local democracy transcending issues. Communicative planning theory rests on two assumptions, the first being that planning discourse is the best view into planning practice and the other that the most important element of planning practice is moving from subject-to-subject interaction.

The vulnerability of the communicative planning theory lies in its tendency to substitute moral persuasion for analysis. The planner needs to understand the different arguments of the community, identify what is factual and substantive (Sager, 2006) and guide the knowledge or direct the attention to where it is needed (Innes, 1995). Planners’ roles in communicative planning theory include technical expert, mediator, initiator, facilitator and presenter.

Radical Planning Theory: John Friedmann discusses the concept of radical planning. Radical planning takes the power away from the government and gives it to the people. In this process, citizens get together and develop their plans. While radical planning cannot be fully implemented, there are examples of the partial use of radical planning. Some public housing authorities have turned management decisions over to the tenants, who are responsible for proposing a policy change. This allows increased control by the people who live in public housing.

Radical planning is aimed at permanent change in social institutions and values. The Radical Perspective is a postmodern critique of planning (rooted in civil society rather than the state. Emphasis is placed on the heterogeneous public and providing a democratic foundation to everyone, enabling different groups and interests in society. It is action-orientated. There are two streams within Radical planning, firstly, a combination of activism, idealism and pragmatism which focus on precise substantive ideas about collective action with results for the immediate future, for example, transactive planning. The second stream of thought focuses more on the theory of the state and the cause of class structures and economic connections. The criticisms of advocacy planning theory led to a wave of radical approaches to planning for the underprivileged.

Feminist Planning Theory: Feminist planning theory, comfortable operating within the post-modem critique, calls planners to task for valuing economic production while undervaluing or ignoring familial and community re-production, as well as ignoring the different ways men and women use space. The feminist theorists argue that economic efficiency measures universally used in planning analyses attach zero value to home child care, or to volunteer work in community organizations, among others. They also cite transportation models as oriented around the journey to work. Women, in particular, tend to make more trips other than the conventional journeys from home to the workplace.

Substantive Planning Theory (Theory in Planning)

There were very clear pieces of evidence on the distinction in the planning education and practice of that time. Firstly, it was apparent from the two types of problems faced by planners in practice. The first set of problems was planners’ specific concern about their particular core subject. Examples include land-use planning, what motivates the object of their planning, what causes changes, etc. This problem can be taken care of through appropriate means, for example, computer models and factor analysis. This is known as the ‘Theory in Planning’ or substantive theory.

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2.0       THE PLANNING PROCESS

The steps of the planning process vary across literature, however, there are steps in the Planning Process that cut across different generated lists, therefore the below list indicates the most items on the planning process. The planning process stages are:

The planning process is the stages/steps planning efforts to address urban and rural settlement challenges are taken through. If you examine the diagram above, it consists of 8 steps/stages, so for example, if we intend to address the development challenges of any city, i.e., Abuja, we follow through the eight steps to provide a solution to the development challenges of Abuja. Again, let's say to address these developmental challenges we intend to prepare a master plan.

Step 1: The first step is the identification of issues, opportunities and assumptions. You need to first understand what is it that we want to do, this could be the feedback in the towns that make up Abuja on the different challenges they face, newspaper reports, or your on-field assessment.

Step 2: The second step is the formulation of goals and objectives. The goal is the overall intention of the master plan, why we desire the master plan, and to do what. In addition, objectives are generated; the objectives are the means to achieve the stated goal of the master plan.

Step 3: The next stage is to collect relevant data that could help to determine the needs of the people and also help to ascertain the level of provided required. Data such as socio-economic features of the people, their trip characteristics, data on infrastructure availability, and adequacy, health, transportation, housing, education, economic, social and environmental are collected using different data collection instruments such as questionnaires, interviews, focus groups etc. After this, the data collected are analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics; this is, for example, to identify patterns, trends, correlation and causation among others. The result of this analysis will dictate largely what and how we plan for the settlement.

Step 4: Please note that if some other instances step four could be merged with step 2, however, in this instance, the is to enable adjustment to the goal generated in step 2 probably based on the outcome of the field investigation.

Step 5: based on the outcome of the analysis of data, alternative plans are generated to address the identified development challenges in the settlement. For example, in most planning activities two to three alternative plans are generated to address identified challenges. It should be noted that any of this plan is worth implementing. For this, we can generate three alternative plans (A, B, C)

Step 6: The alternative plans (A, B, C) generated are taken through plan evaluation using different evaluation approaches including include goal achievement matrix, and checklist approach among several others. After this, one alternative will be selected as the preferred based on the fact that this (selected plan) performs better than the other two plans.

Step 7: This stage involves the implementation of the different segments of the selected plan as carried out in step 6. Note this plan could be put in phases, for example, if the plan is for 20 years (2019-2039), we could decide to have four phases of five years each.

Step 8: During and after the implementation of the different segments of the selected masterplan, there is a need to review the actions taken, what has been done, what is left undone, has the plan achieve stated goals, what areas need improvement etc. this among several others are issues to be treated in the monitoring stage.

3. PLANNING MODES AND TRADITIONS IN BOTH CAPITALIST AND SOCIALIST ECONOMIES

As indicated earlier planning is to ensure order and an overall sustainable urban and rural environment. In the world governance system, there are two broad forms of governance, these are capitalism and socialism. Also, this identifies two economic systems in the world. For capitalist economies, the economic process is largely controlled by the private sector while for socialist economies the economic process is directed by the government. Planning activities would differ in these two economies. Capitalism is understood as a system based on private ownership, market allocation and entrepreneurship. Socialism, defined as a system based on social ownership and planned coordination of the economy,

Capitalism is often defined as an economic system where private actors are allowed to own and control the use of the property by their interests, and where the invisible hand of the pricing mechanism coordinates supply and demand in markets in a way that is automatically in the best interests of society. Government, in this perspective, is often described as responsible for peace, justice, and tolerable taxes

In such a socialist society based on economic planning, the primary function of the state apparatus changes from one of political rule over people (via the creation and enforcement of laws) into a technical administration of production, distribution and organization, that is the state would become a coordinating economic entity rather than a mechanism of political and class-based control and thereby ceasing to be a state in the traditional sense. In a capitalist economy market force dictates the planning process while the state controls the apparatus of planning in a socialist economy. Comparisons between the planning model in socialist and capitalist should involve how the governance system operates as this also dictate other institutional processes. The urban planning management system is defined as a system encompassing all means, methods, and tools to realize goals set.  To compare and contrast the planning system/process between socialist and capitalist urban planning management system is constrained by its unique political, socio-economic, and other factors operational in a country i.e., socialist or capitalist.

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4. CITIZEN’S PARTICIPATION AND EVALUATION IN THE PLANNING PROCESS

4a. Citizen Participation

Citizen participation is regarded as citizen power because it enables the citizen/public participants in the development process, it allows the public to have a say. Citizen participation (or public participation) is a process through which citizens can address and be a part of the implementation of their concerns, needs, and monitoring processes in conjunction with political agenda and central/local government strategies. Originally conceived as a mechanism for obtaining local views on complex issues, public participation provides a safeguard against ill-informed decisions, educates the public and decision-makers alike of each other’s concerns, builds public confidence and understanding, and provides new and valuable information to planners and policymakers. It involves the process of information, consultation, involvement, collaboration and empowerment.

There are two groups of citizen participation model:

·       One-dimensional model (top-down, dominant before the 1990s, emphasizes planners and governmental authority)

·       Multi-dimensional model (bottom-up, after the 1990s, theory of communicative action and communicative planning, considers local communities as the main actors).

One-dimensional models’ general features are:

·       Technical hierarchy

·       Efficiency in using resources and providing solutions

·       Citizen Participation requires technical and legal knowledge

·       Urban planning as a rational tool: Market control, human needs

·       Degrees of citizen participation in decision-making processes

·       Population involvement depends on elites' will and experts’ help

Multi-dimensional model general features are:

·       Reveals social conflict, inequalities and hierarchies

·       Democratic means and social reforms

·       Institutional openness and support favour citizen participation

·       Urban planning as a result of multiple processes and rationales

·       Multiple Levels and Dimensions of possible citizen participation

·       Population involvement depends on its own will and initiatives

Typical participation mechanisms include public hearings, citizen forums, community or neighbourhood meetings, community outreaches, focus groups, the Internet, and e-mail are also used. Public participation leads to satisfying the needs of the public; it helps build consensus on organizational goals, service priorities, good performance, and fiscal commitment; and it improves public trust in governmental decisions

Citizen Participation Ladder

Arnstein, Sherry R. identifies eight (8) levels of citizen participation referred to as the "Ladder of Citizen Participation”, what the ladder shows that there are significant gradations of citizen participation. This means that it starts from the lowest to the highest level, this also indicates sometimes some people might be involved in a project but might not be participating as dictated by the tenets of citizen participation.

The bottom rungs of the ladder are (1) Manipulation and (2) Therapy. These two rungs describe levels of "nonparticipation" that have been contrived by some to substitute for genuine participation. Their real objective is not to enable people to participate in the planning or conducting of programs, but to enable powerholders to "educate" or "cure" the participants. Rungs 3 and 4 progress to levels of "tokenism" that allow the have-nots to hear and to have a voice: (3) Informing and (4) Consultation. When they are proffered by powerholders as the total extent of participation, citizens may indeed hear and be heard. But under these conditions, they lack the power to ensure that their views will be heeded by the powerful. When participation is restricted to these levels, there is no follow-through, no "muscle," and hence no assurance of changing the status quo. Rung (5) Placation is simply a higher-level tokenism because the ground rules allow have-nots to advise but retain for the powerholders the continued right to decide. Further up the ladder are levels of citizen power with increasing degrees of decision-making clout. Citizens can enter into a (6) Partnership that enables them to negotiate and engage in trade-offs with traditional power holders. At the topmost rungs, (7) Delegated Power and (8) Citizen Control, have-not citizens obtain the majority of decision-making seats or full managerial power.

4b. Evaluation in the Planning Process

Planning as a discipline is concerned with decision-making to effect change in the future. These changes when implemented need to be evaluated to determine whether they are in line with the objective the planner had in mind when it was proposed. Apart from as an instrument of review, evaluation serves to determine if a project will be implemented in the first place. Evaluation in the planning process is integrating evaluation within the decision-making process in urban and regional planning. Evaluation is used to determine the best o plan, and which plan to select. Generally, the benefits and costs should be measured. Plan evaluation in urban and regional planning presents the avenue to assess intended actions and determined the most suitable options.

Evaluation is a process that critically examines a program. It involves collecting and analyzing information about a program’s activities, characteristics, and outcomes. Its purpose is to make judgments about a program, to improve its effectiveness, and/or to inform programming decisions. Evaluation is the systematic assessment of the worth or merit of some object. It is also the systematic acquisition and assessment of information to provide useful feedback about some object. This definition shows that evaluation is a systematic endeavour and it uses the deliberately ambiguous term 'object' which could refer to a program, policy, technology, person, need, activity, and so on. The definition emphasizes acquiring and assessing information rather than assessing worth or merit because all evaluation work involves collecting and sifting through data, making judgments about the validity of the information and of inferences we derive from it, whether or not an assessment of worth or merit results.

Evaluation can also be defined as a systematic, rigorous, and meticulous application of scientific methods to assess the design, implementation, improvement, or outcomes of a program. It is a resource-intensive process, frequently requiring resources, such as evaluation expertise, labour, time, and a sizable budget. Evaluation, in a broad sense, is concerned with the effectiveness of programs. While common sense evaluation has a very long history, evaluation research which relies on scientific methods is a young discipline that has grown massively in recent years. Evaluation is a systematic process to understand what a program does and how well the program does it. Evaluation results can be used to maintain or improve program quality and to ensure that future planning can be more evidence-based.

Goals of Evaluation

The generic goal of most evaluations is to provide "useful feedback" to a variety of audiences including sponsors, donors, client groups, administrators, staff, and other relevant constituencies. Most often, feedback is perceived as "useful" if it aids in decision-making. But the relationship between an evaluation and its impact is not a simple one -- studies that seem critical sometimes fail to influence short-term decisions, and studies that initially seem to have no influence can have a delayed impact when more congenial conditions arise. Despite this, there is broad consensus that the major goal of the evaluation should be to influence decision-making or policy formulation through the provision of empirically-driven feedback. Other important goals of evaluation include

Improve program design and implementation: It is important to periodically assess and adapt activities to ensure they are as effective as they can be. Evaluation can help identify areas for improvement and ultimately help realize goals more efficiently. Additionally, when the results about what was more and less effective are shared, it helps advance environmental education.

Demonstrate program impact: Evaluation enables you to demonstrate your program’s success or progress. The information you collect allows you to better communicate your program's impact to others, which is critical for public relations, staff morale, and attracting and retaining support from current and potential funders. An alternative view is that "projects, evaluators, and other stakeholders (including funders) will all have potentially different ideas about how best to evaluate a project since each may have a different definition of 'merit'. The core of the problem is thus about defining what is of value." From this perspective, evaluation "is a contested term", as "evaluators" use the term evaluation to describe an assessment, or investigation of a program whilst others simply understand evaluation as being synonymous with applied research. On the importance of the two broad types of evaluation, Formative Evaluations provide information on improving a product or a process while Summative Evaluations provide information on short-term effectiveness or long-term impact to deciding the adoption of a product or process.

However, not all evaluations serve the same purpose, some evaluations serve a monitoring function rather than focusing solely on measurable program outcomes or evaluation findings and a full list of types of evaluations would be difficult to compile. This is because evaluation is not part of a unified theoretical framework, drawing on several disciplines, which include management and organizational theory, policy analysis, education, sociology, social anthropology, and social change

Major Category of Evaluation

Planning evaluation could be Ex-ante (A priori) or Ex-post.

Ex ante Evaluation

Ex ante is the evaluation carried out before plan implementation while Ex post is the evaluation carried out after plan implementation. Ex ante evaluation is a process that supports the preparation of proposals for new or renewed Community actions. Its purpose is to gather information and carry out analyses that help to define objectives, to ensure that these objectives can be met, that the instruments used are cost-effective and that reliable later evaluation will be possible.

A priori evaluation means estimating the projected future impacts of a planned undertaking before its implementation. Often such evaluation involves comparing feasible alternatives in a relatively early stage of planning, to select the best one for detailing and elaboration. Evaluation before deciding to commit resources provides information on a project’s estimated value to enable better decisions.

An ex-ante evaluation can take place at different levels of activity. It can address a policy, a programme or a project. Ex ante evaluation is a tool for improving the quality of new or renewed programmes and for providing information based on which decision-makers can judge the value of a proposal. Therefore, it is important to start ex-ante evaluation work early on in the process when options for programme formulation are still open.

Ex-post Evaluation

Ex-post evaluation is retrospective and is the process of evaluation after the implementation of a project. Ex-post evaluation is a systematic and objective assessment of a completed project, programme or policy – in the context of their planning, implementation and obtained results. It enables project personnel to collect data on how a project has been implemented; if the projects’ anticipated goals were met; if the project is cost-effective; and the potential reasons for the resulting difficulties/unintended effects etc. This information will enable the sponsor institutions and the government, in general, to decide whether the considered project should be amended or replaced by a new project.

Evaluation ex post facto involves measuring or assessing the impacts and effects of the subject undertaking – policy, plan, program or project – to evaluate its outcomes. This kind of evaluation usually begins upon completion or later, to allow time to observe relevant impacts. The evaluation here often includes a systematic analysis of relations between inputs, outputs and impacts to explain the observed results. The purpose of the ex-post evaluation is to learn from experience: its findings may be useful lessons for similar undertakings in the future.

Types of Evaluation

There are different evaluation techniques, some of these include Payback Period, Average Rate of Returns, Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return, Cost Benefit Analysis, Cost-Effectiveness Analysis, Planning Balance Sheet Analysis, Goal Achievement Matrix, Checklist Approach, Threshold Analysis, Linear Programming, Overlay Method etc. the most widely used evaluation technique for planning project is checklist approach which often combines cost and non-cost factors.

Checklist Approach: The checklist approach procedural process involves the identification and collection of major relevant factors; establishment of relative values (weights for each major criterion based on the magnitude of the comparative degree of relevance and importance; evaluation of all strategic alternative plans by considering each plan individually and proceeding through the list of factors and scoring them accordingly to the degree of achievement of the relevant performance objective and summation of the factor points earned by each plan under consideration construction. From the evaluation process, one alternative will be adjudged as the most suitable option of the two alternatives.

Cost Benefits Analysis/Benefit-Cost Analysis: The French economist Dupuis was probably the first to articulate the principles of Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) in 1844, as a way to ensure that the allocation of public investments would maximize total social benefit. BCA was intended to be the public sector equivalent of the private sector’s “discipline of the market”, which could evaluate prospective enterprises based on their potential profit. BCA was first applied in public investment analysis in evaluating large-scale public engineering projects (dams and other flood-control projects) funded under the US (1936) Flood Control Act – among the “New Deal” program’s public works projects It is quite a useful tool for appraising the total aggregated social value of a project (quantified in terms of money), however, BCA gives no answers to other equally important questions asked in the project- or plan- evaluation. These include the question of who gets what and who pays and the proposal’s impacts in terms of distributional equity.

Planning Balance Sheet Analysis (PBSA): this is a modification of BCA, it was developed primarily to address this shortcoming and to add to the Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) index of aggregate social utility some indicators to enable the assessment of distributional impacts. In essence, PBSA is a form of impact analysis: it is a method for analyzing and displaying the repercussions of the subject plan or project, or what Lichfield called its “implications”. A planning Balance Sheet (PBS) was proposed by Lichfield in 1956[7]. It tries to identify and separate the impacts of different alternatives for different groups (producers and consumers). Costs and benefits are expressed in monetary terms, if possible, but may otherwise be entered in any physical measurement unit or score, or even in descriptive terms. A critique of the methods is that it only addresses a very high-level goal like "enhancing community welfare" while impacts only have a meaning concerning a well-defined objective.

Cost-Effectiveness Analysis (CEA): CEA is primarily a tool for ex-post program evaluation. In CEA the undertaking’s costs are assessed, computed and monetarized just as in BCA, but benefits are expressed differently. CEA’s measure of benefits is an effectiveness indicator, which is specifically developed to reflect the proposal’s goal attainment. CEA is well accepted as a valid method for quantified a priori comparison of alternative public investments in goal-related programs, for example, alternative programs in health such as, say, technology and training for early diagnosis of breast cancer vs. advanced technology and training for operative treatment. It can also substitute for BCA in giving a better ex-post evaluation of program effectiveness, for example. assessing the effectiveness of a job placement program by cost per job placement rather than trying to monetarize the aggregate social utility of the program’s impacts.

Goals Achievement Matrix (GAM): This method of evaluating plans assumes that all the relevant goals of the plans under consideration have been identified. Goals are defined operationally to be analyzed in the goals-achievement matrix. According to this procedure, the costs and the benefits of a course of action, which has been designed to serve a set of objectives, are its positive and negative contributions to the achievement of each of the objectives. This, the costs and the benefits resulting from a particular course of action are considered only concerning the goals for which they have significance. The extent of goal achievement is measured in monetary units, in other quantitative units or qualitative terms, depending on how the relevant goals have been defined. The incidence of the costs and the benefits is also recorded. Finally, the relative effectiveness of alternative courses of action in achieving the set of desired objectives is determined. This is done by applying a weighting system to objectives and to subgroups, sectors, locations or activities which are affected.

Goals-Achievement Matrix (GAM) was proposed by   Morris Hill. The core idea is to view costs and benefits always in terms of the achievement of objectives, which are clearly defined in an operational rather than abstract sense. For each goal that can be identified, the applicable unit of measurement is established, in quantitative terms, if possible, otherwise in qualitative terms. GAM performs a trade-off of benefits and costs across sectors per objective. It is quite capable to express the complexity of decision problems. However, GAM is complex and costly, and it does not give a quick answer.

Step 1: Determine criteria relevant to the project (Technical feasibility of the project, financial feasibility (resource availability), Coordination with other projects etc.)

Step 2: Select weights and scoring indicators. Criteria can either be all given the same importance or weight, or they can be differentially weighted.

Step 3: Conclude the assessment

Advantages

GAM     is a  highly visible, transparent tool to select priority projects, allowing broad participation of stakeholders in thematic groups.

As the criteria used to choose projects are decided transparently by the people involved, there is no feeling on the part of stakeholders that projects were chosen indiscriminately.

Disadvantages

It is time-consuming and needs technical expertise (to use Excel sheets) to integrate the prioritization results from various persons, and various working groups. It still provides room for subjective bias, as the final score could sometimes lead to decisions which are not supported by the community (or by the decision-makers). Criteria might need readjustment, or additional prioritization tools should be used as well.

5. SOCIAL SCIENCE CONTRIBUTION TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF PLANNING THEORY

The rationale behind this is that social scientists contribute to the understanding of social, political, and economic problems in society and help to plan development projects in such a way that they address basic developmental needs involved in development planning.

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1.1      Introduction

Entrepreneurship has taken a prominent place in recent discussions on economic growth and job creation; some facts support these claims, while others are largely based on speculation. Entrepreneurship is a crucial component and driver of national development, stimulating employment generation across various strata of society. Entrepreneurship offers numerous benefits to individuals, enabling them to address challenging social, economic, developmental, cultural, and technological problems. However, there is a need to master the process of entrepreneurship, which enables easy identification of opportunities, addresses the issue of entrepreneurial financing, enhances the process of business setup, and enables prospective or practicing entrepreneurs to derive maximum benefits from the process. 

This write-up series focuses on urban planning entrepreneurial opportunities, the tools for executing them, and how to utilise these tools, as well as case studies of planning entrepreneurial opportunities. In this lesson, I will focus on the entrepreneurial opportunities and the process involved. The lesson is divided into seven parts, which include: introduction, understanding entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial process, generating entrepreneurial insights, lean entrepreneurship ideas, entrepreneurial finance, entrepreneurial challenges and factors, and an overview of entrepreneurial opportunities.

1.2      Understanding Entrepreneurship and Process

Tom Eisenmann said that an entrepreneur must create and deliver something new, a solution to a customer’s problem that’s better than, or costs less than, current options. I like this definition because it focuses on what is offered rather than the age or size of the venture. Hence, an entrepreneur should CREATE and OFFER VALUE. As an entrepreneur, what issue do you want to address? What solutions do you have to offer? What are the customers’ pain points you want to alleviate? This, I believe, is how we should see entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship.

In entrepreneurship, there are inherent risks; the immediate future is not entirely foreseeable, despite engaging in various projections and calculations, and a degree of uncertainty remains. These uncertainties are risks, including demand risk, technological risk, execution risk, and financing risk. These are questions of whether there will be enough demand for the professional services, the question of having enough funds for setup, and whether there is access to appropriate technology to carry out the service offering, among others. These are risks that need to be planned for and overcome to avoid derailing the entrepreneurial journey.

Entrepreneurship is a way of thinking, reasoning, and acting with intense focused on solving problems and activities ultimately towards capturing value for the entrepreneurs and the general society. I also believed that an entrepreneur should have the appropriate mindset to succeed. An entrepreneurial mindset is a belief system, thought process, and behavioral pattern. There are different versions of what the mindset of an entrepreneur should be; however, across all these versions, there is some form of agreement. An entrepreneur should be positive-minded, tenacious, yet flexible when required to change their perspective, curious, possess basic numerical skills, be creative, and have good verbal and non-verbal communication skills. These mindsets can be developed by setting clear goals and sticking to them; however, these goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and have a well-defined time frame.

It is worth noting that a process underpins entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship should not be about aimless shots or efforts; specific procedures and processes should guide it. The entrepreneurship process entails a series of activities necessary to actualise an entrepreneurial idea. There are different forms of the entrepreneurial process; some consist of five steps, while others consist of six or seven steps. However, any format adopted should highlight problem/issue identification, idea conception, team selection, resource identification, identifying customer pain points, market testing, financing, prototype development, and service or product launch, among other key steps. It should be noted that this is not necessarily a linear process; sometimes, these steps could be alternated.

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1.3      Generating Entrepreneurial Insights

Entrepreneurship is mostly about seeing and seizing opportunities. This revolves around addressing challenges and issues to create and offer value for the benefits, which can be financial, social, or moral, to entrepreneurs. Identifying opportunities involves judgement and the decision-making process: how do we identify opportunities? What do we look out for? In generating entrepreneurial ideas for business setup, there are important components.  These components, as identified by Nils Nilsson, include the persons (entrepreneurs), environment, opportunity, process, and initiatives (the entrepreneurial idea), as shown in Figure 2.

These components (persons, environment, opportunity, and process) must work together as a system; all components are important and necessary to interact smoothly and generate effective initiatives (entrepreneurial ideas). The four items (persons, environment, opportunity, and process) are inputs that result in an output: initiative (the entrepreneurial idea). Nils aptly captures these components this way: “the person(s) enters into an environment, where they eventually notice an opportunity; they then engage in an entrepreneurial process to develop and form a ‘response’, which, if the process is successful, results in a new, value-generating initiative”. The person(s) dimension focuses on character, education, what need to learn; for the environment, the focus is on should we explore the existing environment or create; with regards to the opportunity, what are people pain points, what do they people lack, what are their desires and what plan are needed to actualise the entrepreneurial idea(s).  

1.4      Lean Entrepreneurship Idea

Entrepreneurship can be viewed as a blend of science and art; it involves a certain level of methodical practice, and similarly, there is also some element of intuitiveness that revolves around minimal actions or an elaborate, detailed plan, which is a central core of lean entrepreneurship. The lean entrepreneurship idea is about starting out at a minimal level, enabling entrepreneurs to test the market, understand the pulse of the market, and therefore fine-tune their services or products to meet the market’s needs.  

The ultimate aim is to reduce the level of waste that could result from a false entrepreneurial start.  The central idea of lean entrepreneurship is agility and continuously learning. For example, an entrepreneurial urban planner who adopts the lean entrepreneurship approach is expected to develop a minimum viable product (MVP), which could be either a service or a product, take it to the market, learn from the market's feedback, and refine it to meet the client’s needs.

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Steve Blank and Eric Ries pioneered the idea of the ‘Lean Startup’. Eric Ries developed the Lean Startup framework, which consists of the “Build-Measure-Learn” feedback loop (Figure 3). The build stage involves identifying problem/issue that requires a solution, building a minimum viable product, a minimal version of your urban planning product or service, for example, if you decided to engage in a digital mapping system, you could develop a basic version of this without huge capital outlay required for a full version, take to this market, presents to the prospective users to understand their perception and the performance of the product/service. Measure the outcome of your urban planning products/services using the right metrics (measurement parameters) and learn from the experience. Then, decide whether to continue or discontinue the idea based on the results.

1.5      Entrepreneurial Finance

Entrepreneurial finance focuses on addressing the financial management challenges that arise during your entrepreneurial journey. This is one of the major challenges an entrepreneurial urban planner would face and needs to be addressed early in the entrepreneurial journey. How do you source capital for the startup? Is there any issue of debt to be address? How do you manage the business cash flow? Who organises your financial statements? What is your plan for marketing and sales of products and services? What do you do with the startup valuation? Are you building to sell? All these questions are imperative entrepreneurial finance questions that need to be thoroughly and objectively answered. 

As an urban planner interested in an entrepreneurial journey, you need to have a basic understanding of these financial issues. However, it is not compulsory that you have an advanced level of knowledge of these issues; you could engage the services of qualified professionals to carry out these tasks for you.

1.6      Entrepreneurial Failure and Factors

Tom Eisenmann, the revered entrepreneurship and new ventures professor at Harvard Business School, wrote a book in 2021 titled “Why Startups Fail.” he identified six major reasons why the majority of entrepreneurial ventures fail. These reasons have global applications, meaning they can be seen as reasons for the failure of entrepreneurial ventures across different countries. These include dysfunctional relationships between the parties involved in the entrepreneurial idea, such as relationships among the founders, employees, investors, and other partners.  Another reason for entrepreneurial venture failure is the lack of a market for the idea; most entrepreneurs fail to understand the market and the needs of their customers. Additionally, excessive optimism regarding the entrepreneurial idea, particularly in terms of market demand and sources of finance, often leads to the idea's failure.

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Furthermore, growing too quickly and receiving poor external advice can lead to the failure of an entrepreneurial venture. Other factors identified by other business thinkers include a poor business model, inadequate change management, flawed competitor assessment, poor locational decisions for the business, funding challenges, inadequate customer service, and flawed market assessment. CB Insights highlighted twelve reasons for the failures of entrepreneurial ventures (See Figure 4). Similarly, the entrepreneurial landscape in Nigeria faces numerous challenges, including financial constraints, policy issues, and an inadequate support framework for small and medium-scale enterprises. 

Please note that the focus of this section is not to scare would-be urban planning entrepreneurs and deter them, but to give a form of EARLY WARNING SYSTEM FRAMEWORK. These are likely challenges you could face in your urban planning entrepreneurial journey. Be aware of these factors and plan accordingly. In the course of thinking about your entrepreneurial ideas, you should also consider how to avoid or work around these failure factors. So, I implore you to take the above-mentioned entrepreneurial failure factors as EARLY WARNING SIGNS to enhance the success of your entrepreneurial exploration.

1.7      Urban Planning Entrepreneurial Opportunities Overview

The next lesson (Lesson Two) will focus on different entrepreneurial opportunities available to practicing urban planners. The opportunity exploration would focus on both traditional and contemporary/digital planning opportunities. The discussion would highlight the opportunities, both why and what, and explore the reasons behind them, as well as practical applications in Nigeria and globally.

As noted by Pam Didner, “planning is an active way of discussing the goals, objectives, strategies, and tasks that we need to accomplish and plans are the documentation of planning”. Planning involved an intentional course of action(s), planning is the process that produces the output - plan. These procedures cut across different spheres - business, governance, strategy, finance social development among others.

It is widely noted that General Dwight D. Eisenhower opined that “plan is nothing but planning is everything”, though some attributed the source as an anonymous soldier. Furthermore, the general was noted to have stated that “soon after the battle starts the original battle plan is almost useless, but at that point, the understanding that comes from the planning process that produced it, is invaluable”. Similarly, a Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von nicknamed ‘Moltke the Elder’ said in 1871 that “no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces.”. These are military strategy planning process illustrations of the dynamics and interplay of the process involved in the production of plans for military engagements. Though the quotations are military-oriented, however, any lessons leant could be applied across different fields of human endeavour.

The different quotations on military planning and plan encapsulate the challenges in achieving the end goal of plans to solve issues in marketing, finance, development, public health, project development, urban planning and governance among others. After the production of a plan, the problem could change even before the developed plan becomes operational thus rendering the plan inconsequential but the strategic lessons acquired with regards to problem identification, understanding the particular terrain, understanding human relations and even self-awareness become handy in any other plan production activity. Similarly, the knowledge gain in the application of necessary tools/techniques/models and frameworks in the course of developing the plan could be further applied in any similar area or other areas. Hence, a plan as output could amount to nothing or become fast outdated but the process of production would always be useful, to be recalled and reused.

So, the take-away here is that plans could become outdated in a short while, but the lessons gained in the process of producing the plan would be useful and could be replicated at other times, so the planning process is indispensable. Ultimately, the big lesson we need to draw from this is that one should not despair if a plan that took several hours, days, and months to prepare falls like a pack of cards, one should be positive that the lesson learnt in the process of the plan preparation would come useful in other areas and also while preparing others plan. Also, mistakes of the past could easily be avoided and thus make the new plan more robust and realistic. Convincingly there is a need for greater flexibility in the process of plan-making to allow for manoeuvring, rigidity is not a virtue in making a robust and strategic plan.

Image credit: thebluediamondgallery/Kurmi

1.0 INTRODUCTION

In line with the Lagos State Physical Planning Permit Regulations of 2019 Schedule 2 (professional skills required for preparation of technical reports and drawings), there are four principal planning reports expected on physical development projects for a development permit, these reports are Physical Planning Technical Report (PPTR), Environmental Impact Assessment Report (EIAR), Land Use Planning and Analysis Report (LUPAR) and Traffic Impact Assessment Report (TIAR). These reports are expected to be prepared by a TOPREC registered urban planner. Also, based on the 2019 regulations pursuant to the Lagos State Urban and Regional Planning and Development (Amendment) Law 2019, the expected development in need of these planning reports varied. The relevant provisions and physical development in need of these planning reports are examined below.

2.0 PHYSICAL PLANNING REPORT TYPES

a. Physical Planning Technical Report (PPTR): Section 4 Subsection 7 of the 2019 regulations specified submission of “Two (2) copies of a Physical Planning Technical Report (P.P.T.R) on the PROPOSED DEVELOPMENT”

a1. Physical Planning Audit Report (PPAR): Furthermore, Section 4 Subsection 7 of the 2019 regulation introduced a report for EXISTING DEVELOPMENT named PPAR. It is stated in the regulation that for existing development “Physical Planning Audit Report (P.P.A.R) where the development is existing”. Therefore, in addition to the principal four planning report stated in schedule 5 of the 2019 regulation, there is a report for existing development referred to as PPAR.

b. Environmental Impact Assessment Report (EIAR): Section 4 Subsection 8 of the 2019 regulations specified the submission of “One (1) copy of the Environmental Impact Assessment Report (E.I.A.R)”.

c. Land Use Planning and Analysis Report (LUPAR): Section 4 subsection 2 (iv) of the 2019 regulation required development seeking permit approval to submit a Land Use Planning and Analysis Report (LUPAR) in addition to other documents.

d. Traffic Impact Assessment Report (TIAR): Section 4 subsection 11 of the 2019 regulations indicated and specified submission of “One (1) copy of the Traffic Impact Analysis Report (T.I.A.R)” for a proposed development.

3.0 PHYSICAL PLANNING REPORT FOR SPECIFIC PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT PERMIT

a. Physical Planning Technical Report (PPTR):

Section 4 subsection 15 (a) of the 2019 regulations specifies planning development required to submit a Physical Planning Technical Report for planning permit to include: (i) a residential land from 1 (one) hectare and above; (ii) a residential development in excess of (eight ) family units; (iii) factory or warehouse building or its expansion, (iv) office or other commercial buildings; (v) places of worship/assembly/conference/event center; (vi) recreational development; (vii) institutional buildings and public buildings (including all government projects); (viii) petrol or gas filling and service stations; (ix) educational institution/facilities or; (x) any development which, in the opinion of the Ministry and the Authority, requires the submission of a Physical Planning Technical Report.

a1. Physical Planning Audit Report (PPAR):

Development requirement for physical planning audit report is subject to the discretion of the ministry and the authority. Section 17 of the 2019 regulations stated “The Ministry and or the Authority may carry out or request Physical Planning Technical Audit Report on any existing development where and when necessary”.

b. Environmental Impact Assessment Report (EIAR):

Section 4 subsection 16 of the 2019 regulations specify development required to submit an environmental impact assessment report to include: (i) oil and gas pipeline depots and installation; (ii) tank farm; (iii) gas storage; (iv) other liquefied petroleum storage; (v) refineries; (vi) large scale industrial development; (vii) roads, rail lines, seaport, and airport development; (viii) large scale educational institutions or facilities such as for Tertiary Institution; (ix) development or production process which may be injurious to the environment; (x) other development which, in the opinion of the Ministry and the Authority, requires the submission of an Environmental Impact Assessment; and (xi) other projects as may be deemed necessary by the Ministry and/or the Authority.

c. Land Use Planning and Analysis Report (LUPAR):

To be submitted with physical development seeking permit approval in addition to other documents.

d. Traffic Impact Assessment Report (TIAR):

Section 4 subsection 16 of the 2019 regulations noted that in addition to an environmental impact assessment report Commercial Centres and Mass Housing Estates development projects requires a Traffic Impact Assessment (T.I.A).

By: Tpl. Adeleke Akinpelu, MINITP, AITD, MNES, MGARP, RTP

We could go on and on, we could give all manner of excuses, the fact of the matter is, in this Ikoyi building collapse and most other building collapses in Lagos State in specific there is negligence from the sector of the built environment with the statutory responsibility to be the general overseer and somewhat the gatekeeper, this sector is the town planning component of the built environment professional framework.

Taking a view of the law, pursuant to Lagos State Urban and Regional Planning and Development Law, Cap U2, the Lagos State Building Control Agency Regulations, 2019 in section 2 and 3 specified that a developer gives the building control agency notice of intention to commence construction and similarly submit relevant planning permit documents. Furthermore, section 4 (I) of the regulation specifies that “an Inspector of the Agency or authorised officer shall inspect the construction site”. Pertinent to note further, the regulation in Section 8 (I) specifies that “Building Stage Certification shall be carried out by inspectors of the Agency…”. More importantly, the regulation stated in Section 8 (2) that “on completion of each stage of building construction, the developer shall obtain a stage certificate of satisfactory execution…” Section 8 (3) also mandated site inspection by the building control agency to the effect that “a copy of the signed logbook to be kept by the inspector of the Agency…”

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The pertinent question is, if the professionals in the Ministry Physical Planning and Urban Development, Lagos State Physical Planning Permit Authority and the Lagos State Building Control Agency had performed their statuary responsibilities, would there have been the Ikoyi building collapse incident? Different excuses could be given, among which would include political interference in the physical development process in the State, rightly so but the question is, does this justify the abandonment of statutory duties?  

It could also be put forward that the incident was a result of developers’ greediness or negligence of other professionals or compromised decisions or even nature, however, if the relevant physical development and building control agencies were forthright the incident could have been nipped in the bud. The LASBCA Regulations 2019 Section 23 (2) stated clearly that “The Agency shall periodically probe all building developments within the State to identify defective and distressed structures” and in the same manner, the LASPPPA Regulations 2019 Section 28 stated that “As from the commencement of these Regulations, the Authority shall monitor compliance with Approvals issued by it”, hence it would not be out of place to state that if these functions had been carried out the Ikoyi development could have been stopped and ultimately demolished before the unfortunate collapse. But it was not so because there was the negligence of statutory duties by concerned agencies.

Tpl. Adeleke Akinpelu, MNIM, AITD, MNES, MGARP, RTP

Principal Consultant, SMC Professional Services, Lagos State.

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