Social sustainability: guidelines for urban development and practice in Abuja City, Nigeria

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Ogunsola, S.A., 2016. Social sustainability: guidelines for urban development and practice in Abuja City, Nigeria. PhD, Nottingham Trent University.

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Abstract

This thesis presents an explorative study of sustainable urban development practice in Nigeria's capital city, Abuja. The attainment of sustainable development has been a focal point for urban planning researchers and policy makers globally. Despite the Brundtland Commission's report that defined and integrated the pillars of sustainability, the implementation of sustainable urban planning remains a challenge with conflicting perspectives between sustainable development stakeholders through policy programme and practice in developed and developing countries. This research explores the sustainability of Abuja's urban development framework from the triple bottom-line perspective, evaluating current urban planning and experience from both policy and occupant perspectives. Employing qualitative strategies, an ethnographic methodology was used for primary data collection with phenomenology as a theoretical lens for content analysis. Empirical work involved 73 semi-structured interviews that were conducted alongside ethnographic observations; with the resulting data analysis performed using NVivo 11 software. Additionally, archival documents were reviewed, and contributed to the reported findings. The findings highlight social issues as the main area of sustainability challenge with inequalities, urban exclusions, policy inconsistencies, illegal property developments and neighbourhood contrasts as some key outcomes. These factors were linked to public corruption, data limitations and nepotistic practices that created these problems and they highlighted reoccurring defects within the existing policy framework. This thesis contributes to existing knowledge and practice by proffering a set of guidelines for improving social development and practice within the Abuja area. It also contributes to knowledge development in terms of identifying social sustainability challenges and engendering factors in developing nations.

Item Type:	Thesis
Creators:	Ogunsola, S.A.
Date:	December 2016
Rights:	This thesis is the intellectual property right of the author. Due acknowledgement must always be made to the author in the re-use of any material contained in, or derived from this thesis. This is in accordance with the terms of The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Further reproduction of this work in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	14 Mar 2017 14:15
Last Modified:	14 Mar 2017 14:15
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/30381