Urbanization and Effective Town Planning in Nigeria

Abstract

Town planning as a professional discipline in the field of environmental studies and management is essentially for all town and country planning activities and development in the country. The town planning profession will have a lot of things to say as regards good governance. The profession flourished well before the Land Use Act, suffered grievously during the thick of Land Use Act, which eroded a lot of functions in the preparation of layouts due to the executive power of the State Administrators over land. The military regime dealt a serious blow to the progress and implementation of planning programmes by flagrant abuses and imposition of orders. Planning became full government controlled and development control was public-oriented, whereas under the effective rule of law and good governance, physical planning is meant to take adequate control of future development. The systematic development is essential and necessary for the orderly growth of the towns and cities with the use of master plans, land use zoning, and layout of new areas as some of the planners' techniques for achieving the desired goal. That is why good governance and effective leadership control is an asset for city development. These analyses are what the paper has examined.