Learning from Tradition: Elements and Practice of Urban Development Control in Zaria City, Nigeria

Abstract

Pre-modern settlements in developing countries are growing, and like their modern counterparts, there has been increasing call for their proper management and safeguarding of their environment. Monitoring of development and redevelopment is usually a preferred vehicle for control in both old and new settlements which normally coexists alongside emerging metropolis. However, while new settlements met modern rules and regulations; pre-modern cities have long been in existence centuries before European colonizers brought western-style planning regulations to this part of the world. Effective control of developments in pre-modern sectors of emerging metropolis in Nigeria is usually challenged because it lacks suitable rules, guidelines and standards to established adherence or contraventions. This research, through physical and social surveys, using instruments of historical and anthropological research - individual discussions, structured questionnaires, interviews, and Focused Group Discussions (FGDs), was able to establish all these. It was also able to evaluate these standards in use at both settlements to establish the advantages of traditional measures and guidelines over and above modern regulations. Recommendations were on enforcing formal development control activities in traditional communities which were though founded on these rules but due to long neglect now appear align to many of their inhabitants.