“Having a decent space to call home is a cornerstone of a liveable city.” – reSITE, a global platform connecting people and ideas to improve the urban environment, 2020
Cities must be innovative; otherwise, they will stop functioning properly. Innovation goes hand in hand with technology, making city life easier and allowing people to live more fulfilling lives.” – Patrizia, European City Ranking, 2023
In June 2024, the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU), an affiliate of The Economist, published its annual report on The World’s Most Liveable Cities 2023. Vienna, Austria, maintained its position as the numero uno world’s liveable city for the third consecutive year (2021, 2022 & 2023) among 173 cities surveyed across the globe.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Lagos, Nigeria’s primate city, was in a starkly different position, ranking a challenging 170th. This placed the megacity among the world’s top “10 least liveable cities”, as reported by the EIU. This position has been a consistent feature for Lagos over the past three years – 2021, 2022, and 2023 – a stark contrast to Vienna’s three-year reign as the world’s most liveable city.
The EIU considered several significant factors in conducting the global survey and ranking the participating cities, including education, environment, health care, connectivity, amenities, culture, safety, and sustainability.
While some cities, such as Hong Kong, Osaka, Johannesburg, and Oslo, made valiant efforts to improve their ratings by moving up the ladder of the world’s most liveable cities, Lagos, along with Dhaka, Karachi, Algiers, Tripoli, and Damascus, have adamantly remained at the bottom of the ladder year in and year out.
They are annually ranked among the world’s top 10 least liveable cities. The authorities in charge of planning and managing these cities seem content with the plight of the cities they superintend, as evidenced by the need for improvement in their rankings.
This piece addresses Lagos’s poor annual liveability ranking among other global cities. It starts by posing a direct question: Is Lagos truly a liveable city? To what extent is Lagos liveable? What are the factors that hinder tolerable liveability levels in the megacity? It emphasises the Lagos State Government’s (LASG) significant role in improving the residents’ liveability conditions.
Before we delve into the specifics of Lagos’s liveability, let’s first understand what it means for a city to be liveable, a term often used in urban planning discussions.
Liveability, a sustainability meme, explains certain conditions required to facilitate decent living for the residents of cities and sundry categories of human settlements, including their physical, social, and overall well-being.
A liveable city is a human-centred settlement that provides essential urban services such as efficient public transport, affordable housing, health care, education, recreational facilities, security, a wholesome environment, and the promotion of culture, all to guarantee a better quality of life and living.
All these factors have been a daunting challenge to the planning and management of the Lagos conurbation. Consequently, its liveability ranking could be a lot higher. Firstly, the issue of public transportation and connectivity within the megacity is often a harrowing experience for the residents. Lagos is notorious for traffic, where commuters spend long hours on the road trying to reach their various destinations for work, school, and commercial purposes.
Strangling traffic has adverse health implications for the environment and commuters. The emission from large vehicles on the city roads pollutes the environment. At the same time, the commuters suffer the consequence of the unclean air they breathe because of the relentless environmental pollution. The residents’ quality of life and liveability are unavoidably in jeopardy.
The famous saying that Lagos is not for low-income people has a telling effect on housing affordability among a larger percentage of the residents. A significant percentage of the population needs help to afford to pay the rent for decent accommodation.
As a result, they live in crowded slum areas without amenities, precluding them from comfortable, healthy living. Therefore, the shortage of affordable housing is one of the negative factors affecting Lagos’s low liveability ranking among the world’s most liveable cities.
Another factor of city liveability where Lagos is deficient is the provision of social services such as health care and educational facilities. The LASG’s efforts in this direction are overwhelmed by the high demand from the colossal population of city residents. The health care system is overburdened. Access to health care services takes work.
The low-income people find access to health care services very difficult, even though such services are supposed to be free. The doctor-patient ratio is not within the acceptable standard specified by the World Health Organisation. The WHO standard is a ratio of 1:600 patients, while that of Lagos is 1:9,083 (The Lancet, Feb. 24, 2024).
The number of public schools is grossly inadequate, and families with school-age children, especially the slum dweller parents, often experience unpalatable moments trying to register their wards in public schools. Embarrassed by student overpopulation in public schools, the LASG has vowed to tackle the problem frontally, according to the Director-General, Office of Education Quality Assurance, Mrs Abiola Seriki-Ayeni, who further said that “the state had quality education for pupils in schools in Lagos State as its topmost priority…and that the government was building more schools in places where existing schools are overpopulated and more qualified teachers while training existing ones in effective class management.” (Punch, August 31, 2023).
Access to quality education should also be part of the effort to improve the state’s educational system.
Lagos is an island. As the saying goes, water is everywhere, but there is none to drink. The city’s major liveability factor challenge is providing POTABLE WATER (my emphasis) for the teeming population of the megacity. The entire megacity is underserved with drinking water. The Lagos Water Corporation (LWC) has a daunting task in coping with its cardinal responsibility as a water provider to the city’s residents. Most of the water infrastructure had broken down beyond repairs.
The government should be decisive about providing potable water to the nooks and crannies of the megacity. The LASG must build additional water treatment/pumping stations, and the few existing ones should be overhauled for operational efficiency. Water is life. Maintaining essential human and house hygiene would be easier with a constant water supply for the residents’ daily shores.
Liveable cities must be aesthetically appealing. A foreign freelance journalist visiting Lagos for the first time once quipped, “Lagos appears as a city that has never been touched by urban planning.” The disorderliness, notice of noise pollution, refuse, open drainage and presence of urchins on the streets of Lagos are attributes of an unliveable city. These negative factors caused the EIU to give Lagos shallow scores during the 2023 World’s Liveable Cities survey exercise.
Lagos’s yearly ranking among the 10 least liveable cities worldwide for three consecutive years should concern the LASG. It is an indictment. The government must be responsive to the challenges, notwithstanding their enormity. The trajectory must change. All the factors outlined in this piece are germane to improving Quality of Life (QOL). People who love their cities take care of them. But the LASG should lead the cause. More funding should be allocated to each sector to improve the operations of the MDAs.
Some cities have enhanced their liveability ranking because their municipal government worked assiduously to improve the liveability factors where they were formerly deficient. The LASG should emulate best practices.
Tpl. Yacoob Abiodun (Planning Advocate) writes from Chicago, USA
