ASSESSMENT OF HOUSING QUALITY AND EXPANSION IN THE BUILT-ENVIRONMENT OF AKURE, WESTERN NIGERIA

Abstract

It has been shown that housing is one of the best indicators of the standard of living of a person and his status symbol in the society. Nevertheless, the phenomena rise in population, number and size of our cities, over the past few years, have manifested in the acute shortage of dwelling unit which resulted in overcrowding, high rents, poor urban living conditions, and low infrastructure services and indeed high crime rates. This study assessed the housing quality and expansion in Akure, South-Western, Nigeria with a view to evolving policy framework that could enhance effective housing delivery in the study area. It basically assessed spatial expansion of Akure; evaluate the determinant of housing quality in the study area; and assess quality of housing amenities and infrastructures in the study area. Primary and Secondary data was used in this study. Primary data was essentially through questionnaires administration to elicit information on the socio- economic characteristics of respondents, physical and neighbourhood characteristics and the quality of housing. In addition to these, the coordinates of polling centres were collected. Secondary sources include the satellite imageries of Landsat for three epochs (1986, 2000 and 2015) to acquire land use information. Censured figure of Akure was collected from National Population Commission and the location of polling centres was obtained from Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Akure. The Landsat imageries were classified using maximum Likelyhood classification algorithms with built up area as the primary class of interest, while the qualitative information obtained with the questionnaire was thereafter quantified and spatial autocorrelation was carried out on the data. Variables that auto correlated, were mapped out to show their varying level of influence on the spatial coverage of the study area. The results show that, there were tremendous growths of Built-Up areas with decrease in farmland with the rate of change per annum between 1986-2000 and 2000-2015 as 2.95% and 4.55% respectively. The urbanization in Akure was classified between 1986 and 2016 as core 1757Hectares, 19.27% of total built-up area, transition area as 3375Hectres, 37.03% and sub-urban 3984Hectres, 43.70%. The total built-up area of Akure was 9116Hectres. It is observable that an increasing shortage of urban services and infrastructure characterize Akure town, and these are only accessible to a diminishing share of the population. The existing urban services are overstrained which often times lead to total collapse.