Urban Renewal
Urban renewal is the process where an urban neighborhood or area is improved and rehabilitated. The renewal process can include demolishing old or run-down buildings, constructing new, up-to-date housing, or adding in features like a theater or stadium. Urban renewal is usually undergone for the purposes of persuading wealthier individuals to come live in that area.
Urban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in cities, often where there is urban decay. Urban renewal often refers to the clearing out of blighted areas in inner cities to clear out slums and create opportunities for higher class housing, businesses, and more. Modern attempts at renewal began in the late 19th century in developed nations, and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s under the rubric of reconstruction. The process has had a major impact on many urban landscapes, and has played an important role in the history and demographics of cities around the world.
Urban renewal is the rehabilitation of city area by renovating or replacing dilapidated buildings with new housing, parks, roads, industrial area among others in accordance with comprehensive plans (Olima, 2003). Urban renewal as a dynamic process of physical change (redevelopment and rehabilitation) change in use (shift from one use to another) or intensity use of land and building as the effect of the interaction economic and social forces upon the areas (Couch, 1990).
The concept of urban renewal as a method for social reform emerged in England as a reaction to increasingly cramped and unsanitary conditions of urban poor in the rapidly industrializing cities of the 19thCentury. The agenda that emerged was progressive doctrine that assumed better housing conditions would reform its residents morally and economically. Another style of reform imposed by the state for reasons aesthetics and efficiency and could be said to have begun in 1853 with the recruitment of Baron Hussmann by Louis Napoleon for the redevelopment of Paris. Urban renewal has been seen by proponents as an economy engine and reform mechanism, and the critics as a mechanism for control. It enhanced existing communities, and some cases result in demolition of neighborhoods. Many cities link the revitalization of the centered business district and gentrification of residential neighborhoods to earlier urban renewal programs. Over time, urban renewal evolved into policy based less on destruction and more on renovation and investment and today is an integral part of many local Governments, often combined with small and big business incentive. It is defined as “ a systematic effort in the field of planning and building as well as of the social economic, cultural and environmental repair, improve, restructurer or clear built-up area within municipalities’’ (Metsella, 1992).
It is not easy to find a satisfactory definition of urban renewal which embodies the complexity of issues involved in the process. Some of the existing theoretical and ideological disagreements about urban change are thought to come, in part, from the fact that the terms used by different scholars reflect different perceptions of the phenomenon and its significance (Palen and London, 1984). Urban literature uses, often without definition, terms such as urban regeneration, urban revitalization, gentrification, neighborhood renewal, rehabilitation, and renovation. In this discussion, the term urban renewal is used to refer to the general process of transforming the urban environment.
Urban renewal is often presented as a natural process through which the urban environment, viewed as a living entity1, undergoes transformation. "As the years pass, transformations take place, allowing the city to constantly rejuvenate itself in a natural and organic way" (Treister, 1987: 57).
Although Africa has one of the lowest human Development index (HDI) in the world, it is estimated that within the next two decade 87% of population growth will take place in urban areas of the continent (Darainola and Ibem 2010, p125). Nigeria as one of the economic grants in Africa with population of over 158 million is currently overwhelmed by rapid urbanization, poor infrastructure and ever increasing number of urban slums across the country. The urban infrastructure decay such as poor road network, lack of portable water supply, bad drainage and canals, poor housing and waste (disposal) management systems, have increased the environmental threat within the urban populace (Gbadegesin and Aluko, 2010).
Furthermore, Hayhoe, Robson, Rogula, Auffhammer, Miller, vandom and wuebbles, (2010) noted that “many large cities are already subject to a number of stressors affecting the quality of their air and water, the health and warfare of their population, the availability of key resources such as energy and water, cost of maintaining their infrastructures”
Osuide (2004) described urban regeneration as a planed attempt to transform the urban environment through structural large scale control existing urban areas to enhance both the present and future operation of the urban populace (Osuide 2004, cited in Dimuna and omatsone p142). Future more Zielenbach and Levin (2000) describe urban renewal as the physical redevelopment of shattered areas, an improvement of undesirable individuals or private organizations and creation of additional Jobs. However, urban renewal projects have faced great challenges in most urban centers of Nigeria. This has been attributed inadequate urban renewal policies as well as poor action plan on urban regeneration. Also urban settlers lack the willingness to accept urban renewal projects in Nigeria as a result of poor communication and stakeholders and concerned residents. Considering the public perspective, the general concern is how to adapt into the government urban renewal plans without imposing further poverty, particularly those living in urban slums.