Urban Planning — “It’s All About Sustainability”: Urban Planners’ Conceptualizations of Sustainable Development in Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Abstract

Sustainable development forms the core of urban planning in contemporary times. Urban planning has been recognised as being central to sustainability because well planned urban centres can be engines of economic prosperity, social well-being and environmental sustainability. Port Harcourt, a major Nigerian city faces many environmental challenges like flooding that impacts achieving sustainable development and which has been linked to urban planning. Urban planners carry out spatial planning but there is a paucity of research that engages with these professionals to gauge their understanding of sustainability. This paper seeks to fill this gap. It draws on qualitative interview data from five urban planners in Port Harcourt city, Nigeria, to explore their understandings of the concept of sustainable development and how they implement this understanding in their day-to-day work. This research reports the urban planners have a solid understanding of sustainability and the role of planning in its achievement. Their understanding centres around longevity and building long lasting human settlements in consideration of future planning decisions. This aligns with current global thinking whereby planning is key to achieving sustainable development. This finding suggests the environmental problems experienced in Port Harcourt are likely due to weak infrastructural base and a failure to implement/enforce planning regulations that aim to promote sustainable development.

Flooding, Food Security and the Sustainable Development Goals in Nigeria: An Assemblage and Systems Thinking Approach

“…(i) Improved physical planning: Urban planning has a role to play in reducing the impact of flooding on food security. The unregulated or poorly regulated nature of urban development in Nigeria has contributed majorly to flooding incidences due to developments on floodplains and natural drain paths (Echendu 2020b;Idoko 2016). The urban growth pattern, therefore, deserves closer attention, with good regulations and effective implementation put in place.…”

Adapting the Singapore Model to Nigeria’s Urban Management

“…Sustainable urban planning and development are aimed at reducing and mitigating urban problems and achieving sustainable development by applying the concept of the sustainable city and its principles in the development of urban centers (Larijani 2016). The importance of land-use planning as an integral process of achieving sustainability is well documented in the literature (Echendu 2020b, Musa et al 2018, Wei et al 2018. Agenda 21, a comprehensive action plan to be taken globally, nationally, and locally underscores that land-use planning is a tool to be utilized in preventing urban sprawl, most especially in important farming land and sensitive regions.…”

“…Unfortunately, this is not the case in Nigeria where the government often fails or is slow to uphold the law and environmental concerns (Eneh 2011). Of particular concern are new housing developments, city infrastructure, and land-use decisions that do not incorporate the tenets of sustainable development (Echendu 2020b). Development in everyday sectors like housing and infrastructure continues to be taken seriously in developed countries, as well as some other developing countries, that have a clear growth and development pathway (Gurara et al 2018).…”

The Transformation of Compact Rural Human Settlements in South Africa - The Case of Elim in Limpopo

“…The fundamental initiative of Local Agenda 21 is that local communities must make their localities sustainable. Several national and municipal authorities included sustainability as the central concept in their plans and acknowledged that urban planning is an influential instrument of facilitating and achieving sustainability [29][30][31][32]. The Laws in Table 3 enacted after 1994 aim to create integrated urban and rural areas that will transform the segregated environment constructed during the apartheid era.…”