Lagos: The Forms and Dissolutions of a Postcolonial Megacity

Abstract

“Lagos is a complex entity that subverts common expectations. It is not just its demographic size that makes it a megacity, but also its social and cultural contradictions … a mega-slum and megacity -- in that order.” -- Oka Obono (2007) The sociologist Oka Obono’s characterization of Lagos brings to the forefront the opposing realities of (post)colonial African urbanisms more generally: abundance as opposed to scarcity, colonial hegemony as opposed to cultural diversity, and crippling elitism as opposed to the lived experiences of the vast majority of urban dwellers experiencing poverty. Urban landscapes are inevitably marked by the fluidity of the spaces produced by contradictions like these—a fluidity that, in Lagos, is marked by the richness of culture and vibrancy of peoples while at the same time making manifest oppression, suffering, and collective trauma. The interaction of group identity and physical space here is simultaneously reciprocal and contested, uniting and fracturing. With Lagos as its focus, this dissertation addresses the interaction of group identity and physical space by bringing several disciplinary perspectives into conversation: urban planning, preservation, anthropology, religion, and postcolonial theory. It takes as its subject a city whose constituent parts, which are bound by water, serve as the unstable container for dramatic ethnic and religious differences, for competing narratives of cultural identity, and for profound socioeconomic divide. Indeed, ethnic and religious contestation, marginalization, and inequality in Lagos exemplify the non-neutrality of physical spaces in which they are made visible. The built environment is both the container of inequality and the stage on which colonial pasts, cultural hierarchies, and social exclusions continuously play out. So, what are the means of describing Lagos in all this complexity? How might such a description lead to a better understanding of the urban environment and to proposals for a more equitable and just city? The dissertation is structured by a sequence of chapters in which the aforementioned non-neutrality of physical space is foregrounded at different urban scales: first, how the traces of colonial urbanism leave their imprint on modern networks; second, how the urban governance and planning interact with current social hierarchies in contexts such as outdoor markets; and, finally, how the physical manifestation of urban informalization offers up forms of resistance. These chapters and the scales they offer as objects of study—the urban grid, the streetscape, and the informalized district—speak in different ways to broader issues of social inequality, the physical unfolding of the urban fabric, and the ways in which this urban fabric shapes and reflects identity, hierarchy, culture, and exclusion. They exemplify the different modalities that construct various political narratives of place in Lagos, resulting in vastly unequal distributions of capital and services.