Spontaneous Settlements at the Peri-Urban Fringe: The Benefits of Adopting the Principles of Sustainability.

Abstract

Widely influence by urbanization, peri-urban fringe settlement continues to developed spontaneously and encroaching on the rural hinterland of the large metropolises of the ancient Kano city wall. This Peri-urban residential settlement has development over the years sporadically without basic housing development and control measures in physical planning and environmental management. The resultant effect is absence of public utilities, deplorable environment, poor living conditions, inadequate social amenities, and lack of neighborhood infrastructures. This study is aimed at examining the impact and challenges of spontaneous development in Dan’bare-settlement of Kano metropolis. Using both mixed method of Quantitative and Qualitative techniques, a Ninety (90) structure closed ended questionnaires were administered to residents to evaluate their perception on social housing attributes and neighborhood infrastructure condition in the study area. Seventy five (75) questionnaires were retrieved representing (83.33%) responses rate and collated data was analyzed using the relevant descriptive and inferential statistical techniques. Result of the survey shown that the respondents were satisfied with the housing services design attributes and Social infrastructures. However, respondents were dissatisfied with neighborhood infrastructures attributes; this includes “Quality of Open Spaces†and “Availability of Pipe borne waterâ€, Vehicular movement & Circulation, Accessibility of Road, Buildings protection against Dampness, Pedestrian movement & Circulations, Refused / Sewage disposal, Quality of Layout & spatial Circulation, Provision of Greenery / Landscape, Drainage efficient, with mean values and RSI values below (M =1.800 and RSI = 0.600), and ranked 12th and below all in the third quartile. Therefore, the study recommend that government should upgrade such unhealthy built-up environment with strong political will that could needs redevelopment by providing infrastructure facilities that promotes social and economic sustainability for the settlers.