Chaos and Complexity:

Lagos and lessons for megacity management in the 21st century

David Rubens MSc, CSyP, FSyI, is currently completing his thesis for the University of Portsmouth

Professional Doctorate in Security & Risk Management, where his research involves developing

models of strategic management and critical decision making for complex crisis environments. He

has just returned to the UK after spending 15 months as MD of a US security consultancy in Nigeria.

Abstract:

Megacities across the world have seemingly reached the limits of what can be effectively managed

within centrally controlled, directive-based mega-urban management frameworks. These

challenges are most starkly seen in the emerging megacities of the global south, where the

natural state of such megacities seems to be a permanent state of dysfunctional chaos. However,

an alternative perspective sees the apparent chaos as an extremely sophisticated self-regulating

system of micro-environments that offer a glimpse into alternative megacity management models.

Keywords: Megacity, complexity, wicked problems, crisis management

The status of the city as the highest form of human social organisation has been an idea, and an

ideal, which has maintained pre-eminence since at least the time of the Greeks. Cities are not only

drivers of economic growth and development, they create a framework that drives progress in all

aspects of cultural, intellectual and social activity.

It is perhaps both a symptom and a cause of a modern global malaise that not only is the role and

function of cities being questioned, but the viability of their very continued existence. Like anything

in nature that aspires to gargantuatism, cities have moved beyond the bounds whereby the

structures and frameworks that first allowed them to prosper and thrive can continue to support the

monsters that they have become. With the rate of growth predicted to rise on Malthusian scales

(the global urban population is estimated to grow by 70 million people a year), the ability of city

managers to continue to supply the basic life-management structures is going to be increasingly

challenged beyond breaking point.

Cities are not only beginning to fail in their fundamental purposes as anyone will know who has sat

in a traffic jam on a road system designed for a slower and simpler age they are actually killing the

people who live there. Whether it is pollution, or the ever-present stress of over-crowded urban life,

the question is being asked as to how the next stage of city development will play out.

Mega-City Management: Dysfunctional, or merely self-organizing?

The rise of the megacity has been accompanied by a paradox that sets the utopian city of the

future against the reality for hundreds of millions of people of the daily struggle that is associated

with life in the megacities of the emerging world. In many ways, the urban dweller in modern day

Lagos, Mumbai, Dhaka or San Paolo would actually see more connection with the 19th century urban

poor described in Dickens, in terms of negotiating the multitude of interactions that go to make up

daily survival, than with the modern day planners in London, Tokyo and New York considering how

fibre-optic communications systems can best be utilised to integrate global financial management,

web-based home security systems or internet ordering from the local sushi bar or Indian takeaway.

Although the rise of the emerging worlds megacities has been well-documented, it is only relatively

recently that the third world experience, and particularly that based on the mega-slums and favelas

of the emerging south, has been seen as anything other than exceptional. Under this reading, the

accepted model of a major city has implied the integrated management and planned development

associated with Europe and North America (and to a lesser degree, Asia). The vast unmanaged slums

of the third world were therefore considered as outliers, with no particular significance from an

urban theory perspective. In fact, so deeply entrenched is the acceptance of the conceptualisation

of the global south megacity that [t]he slum has become the most common itinerary through which

the Third World city (i.e. the megacity) is recognized (Roy, 2011:225).

However, many of todays dysfunctional mega-cities had a previous life as well-run and even

model - urban centres, mixing western-style planned development with a local flavour. But sudden,

unmanageable growth rates soon outstripped the capabilities of the governance frameworks. Until

the mid-1970s, for example, Lagos was a functioning mid-range city, with relatively simple

management system and few complex challenges. Increased urbanisation then led to an expanded

demand on its services and infrastructure, triggering a self-perpetuating cycle of failure and

institutionalised disenfranchisement. Whilst the growth of the developed world megacities was

wealth and opportunity-driven, in the developing-world megacities those that were attracted to the

urban centres were often unskilled, and without the support networks that would allow them to

achieve even the lowest level of self-sustaining life-styles. This inevitably led to the emergence of

shanties and slums which, together with a culture of endemic urban planning violations, rapidly

created a monster that grew beyond the powers of its handlers to control.

The descent of Lagos from a fully-functioning (and even thriving) urban African centre to a

dysfunctional megacity is an issue of political (non)-governance rather than purely one of urban

growth. Whilst it might be difficult to differentiate between the causes and the effects of the

descent into failing city status in what is undoubtedly a complex series of closed feed-back loops,

To represent the city as it is today as an inherently African condition is to ignore the dysfunctional

political and social systems that have arrested the growth of the infrastructure of the city and left it

in dire need of help (Isichiei, 2003:2).

If Lagos were a child she would definitely be described, even by the parents that love her, as having

challenging behavioural traits. As the Honourable Commissioner, Lagos State Ministry of Physical

Planning and Urban Development wrote in the foreword to a 2012 report, By the turn of the last

century, Lagos had become an international poster-child for the doomsayers of the coming urban

challengewith a reputation for overcrowded and squalid living conditions, high rates of crime,

poor governance, urban and environmental degradation and transport chaos (Filani, 2012:4). If

Tokyo can claim to be the vision of the future of the hyper-connected 21st century city, then Lagos

could equally claim to be its evil twin sister that projected its reflection through a demented mirror

of dysfunctionality and chaos.

In 1964, when Nigeria declared independence from its British colonial rulers, Lagos had less than 1

million inhabitants, and could claim to be a self-conscious beacon of a successful modern African

urban centre; cosmopolitan, self-confident, globally aware and connected, but also confident in its

African identity. The opening of the National Theatre in 1976 was a significant landmark in the

consciousness of Lagos, appearing in the writing of many commentators as either signifying the peak

of national pride and confidence, or as a symbol of the disparity between outward show and the

reality of lack of supporting infrastructure (the opening gala was disturbed by a power-cut, a reality

of life in Lagos even today). 1976 was also the year that the decision that was made that Lagos had

reached an insupportable level of dysfunctionality (largely based on the continuous grid-lock due to

an explosion of the number of vehicles on the road combined with a lack of urban planning and

traffic management) and that a new capital, Abuja, would need to be constructed from scratch.

The Lagos experiment in combining modern urbanism with an African flavour was perhaps doomed

from the outset, suffering from Incomplete modernity (Gandy, 2006:374). This phrase encapsulates

both the physical architecture of colonial period major cities, where there was a legacy of under-

developed and unequally distributed urban facilities, as well as local power hierarchies that

produced a highly iniquitous and unstable legacy of authoritarian and undemocratic control.

Post-colonial administration was often fractured, with departments, ministries and agencies being

created on an ad hoc basis, with little overview of the strategic requirements or even basic

organisational frameworks. Such initiatives created the seeds of destruction from their inception. In

Lagos, as in many mega-cities, rather than simplifying the governance structure, each reform merely

succeeded in adding seemingly endless additional layers of competing jurisdictions and agencies.

Administratively, Lagos State, comprises five divisions. In 1991 the divisions were further subdivided

into 20 local government areas, and in 2006, into 37 local government council areas. While the local

government areas are duly recognised in the Nigerian Constitution, the local council areas are not.

Different jurisdictional systems are used for different purposes, for example tax collection,

development projects and the management and implementation of local government programmes.

In reality, the problems Lagos has been facing and which came to full maturity in the dark years of

military dictatorship (1966-79, 1983-98) had antecedents in the earliest days of colonial rule. Despite

the fact that British authorities saw Lagos as the Liverpool of West Africa, there was a disinclination

to invest the resources to develop it as a functioning modern city, and it was known for its swamps

and lack of infrastructure, especially its lack of sewage system. Although there have undoubtedly

been improvements made in recent years, in large part due to the return of democracy and the

emergence of an increasingly meritocratic, technically-enabled administrative class, one description

of Lagos shows what happens when the struggle becomes too tough, and city managers just give up.

With no strategic urban planning, the city has had to contend with challenges such as uncontrolled

urban sprawl, inadequate and overburdened infrastructure, housing shortages, social and economic

exclusion, high youth unemployment, inadequate funding of urban development, rising crime and

physical insecurity, cumbersome judicial processes, and low-level preparedness for disaster

management. In addition, a large informal sector has developed, primarily as a result of in-migration

of unskilled labour (Filani, 2012:16).

The inexorable growth of slum neighbourhoods created the perception that such traditional

communities were outside the framework of structured city management, which in turn led to

increasing levels of alienation, degradation and public health issues. Such problems were then

delineated in terms of public order and safety, rather than in terms of support and resourcing. At the

same time, the responsibility for those areas was seen as being with the people who live there,

rather than with those with the power to do so something about it. Even if there had been a vision

of modern African urban planning, a combination of structural vulnerabilities, plus a lack of political /

administrative frameworks together with a lack of a suitably empowered administrative class,

conspired to derail the African modernisation process from the start.

The modern megacity is widely viewed as being in a failing state. However, an alternative view,

based on his study of Lagos, is espoused by Koolhaas (2000), who sees Lagos as a self-managing

organism, within which constant negotiations between micro-communities take place outside of any

formal city management framework. For Koolhaas, these daily personal negotiations are not a sign

of failed management, but rather a developed, extreme paradigmatic case-study of a city at the

forefront of globalizing modernity (Koolhaas et al, 2000:653). In this view, the cutting-edge

modernity of developing world megacities should be recognised, rather than being judgmentally

labelled as primitive when measured against the template of developed western cities (Robinson,

2006).

Although it is clearly easier to build functionality and good governance into a major city than retro-fit

it once it has descended into a failed state, if the megacities of the developing world are to find a

way of stabilising themselves, then Lagos may well be the petri-dish where such experiments can be

carried out. As the Filani report (2012) makes clear, any improvements that are made are going to be

the result of the transformation of the systems of governance built on sustained political leadership

and long-term policies, rather than quick fix solutions. Some of the planks of the transformation

that Filani identifies are the development of a knowledge-based approach to policy development;

the development of partnerships between public and private sectors that allow effective policy

implementation frameworks; increased oversight and management of public spending; more

effective tax and revenue collection (revenues in Lagos rose from 600m Naira/month ($3.8m) in

1999 to more than 7.bn Naira ($45m) in 2007); the use of information and communication

technology and data collection, and specific programmatic interventions in alliance with UN, regional

and national agencies. At the same time, there was the development of parastatal agencies that

created the framework for policy implementation, including Lagos State Emergency Management

Authority (LASEMA), Lagos State Emergency Medical Services (LASEMS), Lagos State Waste

Management Authority (LAWMA) and the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA)

amongst others (Filani, 2012:6).

Lagos and its brethren megacities across the developing global south are not second-rate, primitive

recreations of real cities, but a model of a future post-modern urban reality. The problems that

these megacities have been wrestling with for decades are increasingly taking centre stage in even

the most advanced cities of the western world. The issue is no longer how to manage better, but

rather how to create a more appropriate management system. An adherence to a mechanistic,

directive-based polity no longer reflects the hyper-complexity of the modern urban experience.

Given the chaotic and free-forming nature of much of megacity life, there is a clear parallel between

some of the issues being faced in developing an effective crisis management decision-making

framework and the same issues being confronted in megacity management circles. If the megacities

of the present are to maintain relevance for the future, then Lagos may well be the pathfinder for

the journey ahead. If, as the saying goes, within chaos there is opportunity, then Lagos undoubtedly

has no shortage of the former. It is my hope and belief that it is also provides the setting for the

latter. As Koolhaas put it, from this perspective, Lagos is not catching up with us. Rather, we may be

catching up with Lagos (Koolhaas et al, quoted in Roy, 2011:227).

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