Urban Land Grabbing Mayhem in Douala Metropolitan Local Council Areas, Cameroon

Abstract

Anarchical land conquest in developing world cities is virally infecting Cameroonian cities epitome by its largest metropolis. This is what this paper sought to portray of the successive augmentation of the Douala V Local Council urban space distinct by a weird anarchy-driven population growth. It posits that it is not just available unoccupied space but institutional indolence has of recent hemmed in urban infrastructural disorder that has led slums grow beyond bounds. Multi-temporal Landsat images for 1975 and 2015 and a Spot image of 1995 were used to determine the spatial colonization and expansion land use/land cover analyses. Results were corroborated with field information through field surveys using structured questionnaires. Findings permitted us note that space colonisation in Douala V experienced a 60.18% upward trend of built-up areas just in four decades (1975-2015), with a 1.5% annual population growth rate. Implications on the urbanscape have been an accelerated and severely degraded forest and natural vegetation form the 1403% growth urban human surge in 42 years (from 57,000 1975 to 800,000 inhabitants in 2017). Douala V thus emerged as an “try and see” land colonisation territory where new arrival of inhabitants inadvertently sowed structural anarchy valued at 51% permanent and 49% temporary structures. Noting that such disorder emanates from top-down urban governance and management this study recommends that urban planning legislation concerning must be inclusive of grass roots to guarantee involment as a canon of sustainable development in modern and post-modern times.