Impact of rapid population growth on public housing schemes and the influence on city resilience

Abstract

Rapid population growth in urban centres has been identified as a threat to city resilience. However, in a developing country like Nigeria, there is a dearth of research on how impacts of rapid population growth on public housing schemes influence city resilience. This study evaluated selected public housing schemes in Abuja, Nigeria, to determine factors of the residents’ perception of impacts of rapid population growth on the housing estates they lived. This was with a view to assessing how these factors influence city resilience. Data for this study were collected from questionnaire administered to 345 residents of the selected public housing estates. The resident samples were asked to indicate their level of agreement/disagreement with 26 statements describing the possible impacts of rapid population growth in the housing estates they lived. The questionnaire was based on a 5-point Likert type scale ranging from 1=Strongly Disagree to 5=Strongly Agree. The data obtained were analysed using descriptive statistics, factor analysis and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to identify the key factors. The result reveals a mean score of 3.59, showing that the residents were in agreement on a rapid increase in population of people living in the estates. In addition, the result reveals a difference between the mean score of residents’ level of satisfaction with the house types meeting their need when they first moved into the estate (3.77) and the extent to which the same house type still satisfies their household need at the time the survey was conducted (3.18). Furthermore, seven factors of residents’ perception of impacts of rapid population growth on the estates emerged from the analysis. The first factor, which accounted for around 11.05% of the variance in the data, comprised need for the addition of more rooms in the dwelling units, consideration of distance of estates to place of work and the economic situation of residents in the estates. The application of this result to housing that influence city resilience is drawn from previous study which identified five key factors of housing that influence resilience and adaptation to stress. The result reveals that none of the seven factors of impact of rapid population growth on the estates that emerged in the current study appears as a factor that influences housing resilience and adaptation to stress. This study implies that for public housing schemes in developing countries like Nigeria to influence city resilience, housing designers and developers should consider factors of housing that are more likely to adapt to the stress of increasing population.