title: Urban renewal and the livelihoods of the urban poor in the slum community of Makoko, Lagos Nigeria
Creators: name: Bakare, Ganiyu Olalekan
Publisher: name: University of Glasgow
Year: 2024

description: In Nigeria, particularly in Lagos, repeated state-led urban renewal interventions have generated increasing debates and discourse in the urban renewal field. Current approaches and studies on urban renewal interventions focus on justifications, motivations, ideologies, strategies, and outcomes. Fewer studies and research have somewhat linked urban renewal interventions to people's livelihood, but with gaps in how the interventions impact lives and livelihood. This thesis aims to generate insights into the impact of state-led urban renewal interventions on the lives and livelihoods of people living in the slum community of Makoko, Lagos, Nigeria. To address the gaps, I ask, in what ways have formal and informal institutions combined to shape the environment within which the people pursue livelihoods? Also, I ask what factors enable and constrain access to different livelihood pathways, including the opportunities open to people, the strategies they employ, and the outcomes they achieve? Also, how do collective responses to urban renewal interventions help people safeguard and maintain their livelihoods? I adopt the Sustainable Livelihood Framework (SLF) to address and analyse these questions. The thesis embraces a social constructivist position and uses a qualitative case study approach with multiple data collection methods. A total of 25 Semi-structured interviews were conducted remotely and in situ between May 2021 and May 2022 with 28 participants. Within this, five follow-up interviews were stimulated through the adapted photo-elicitation method in place of participant observation to elicit responses. In addition to the SLF, thematic, document, and photo-elicitation analyses were used.The analysis shows that the environment within which the government pursues urban renewal interventions, and people pursue livelihoods is one where there is a lack of shared understanding between the two stakeholders, reinforcing the argument around the clash of rationalities. Also, the study recognises the significance of interconnectedness among people. Nevertheless, any disruption(s) caused by the interventions is/are capable of bringing down or even destroying the precariously constructed livelihood portfolios that depend on lives in water and social ties with family, friends, and neighbours, reinforcing the argument around the clash of rationalities. The analysis further reveals the effective community responses of informal leadership and cultural institutions, which promote collectivism instead of individualism. This suggests that collective responses through protest and resistance to the interventions to protect, safeguard, maintain, and secure established livelihood portfolios reinforce the argument of the right to the city and reclaiming it. The combined findings strongly suggest that urban renewal interventions are practically challenging, significantly contributing to the existing empirical literature in the field. In broader terms, the significance of the thesis contributes to the understanding of how actors, i.e., the people and state, exploit their milieu of institutions to protect vested interests, thus perpetuating inevitable conflicts in urban renewal interventions.s Therefore, the study suggests striking a fine balance in designing collaborative and bottom-up urban renewal intervention(s) that would consider the people's realities, i.e., lives and livelihoods, and accommodate the government's interest in ensuring a modern and functional city.