Basically they built a line to nowhere '.

I love that your video focuses on Nigeria, but you do such a good job of reviewing the situation globally that I think much of your conclusions and arguments apply to cities across the globe trying to build their own bicycling and urbanist culture. People and urban and environmental activists throughout the world should watch this video!

pls come back 😢

Great one😊

Love your content❤ very informative and helpful. But I have to disagree with the property tax. More taxation of the people on what they already own is like slavery.

Omg what a great channel; not enough viewers

Enjoyed the video, nice work 👌

3:57 i mean the number of line didnt realy affect the ridership. Jakarta mrt only has 16km of the line but serve 90 thousand peoplle daily.

Woaw

This was a very interesting video. I have a few thoughts/disagreements based on what I know about other cities: (1) The video might be confusing correlation and causation: more expensive developments are more complex, which cause more parties to be involved, not the other way around (more parties cause complexity). An example would be the situation East Asia: Tokyo had much more affordable housing and less government regulation on homebuilders than China at a comparable stage of development, even though Japan's land system is comparatively libertarian, and in China the government outright owns all land. I think looking at Seoul and Taipei would be useful, because they were heavily influenced by Japan and were poor until recently; after WW2 and the Korean War, Korea was actually poorer than Nigeria was then, and in the 1970s those countries were about as rich as Nigeria is now. Their older urban planners have probably lived through the same things Nigeria is going through now. Sources: Japanese historical rent: "Changes in the Prices of House Rent in Japan, 1970-2014", HatennaBlog Japanese inflation: random Japanese inflation calculator on Google (note that inflation-adjusted rents are more-or-less equal 1970 vs 2014) Japanese historical income: Moriguchi and Saez 2002 Both country current income: SalaryExpert "Average Salary in [city], [Country]" Chinese current rent: Numbeo Development/wealth (in terms of GDP per capita): "Divergence of GDP per capita among latecomers to the capitalist revolution.", Our World In Data (This OWID graph is a visualizer for data from the Maddison Project Database from the University of Groningen) Real = inflation-adjusted (eg. real GDP = inflation-adjusted GDP) CN 2020 and JP 1968-69 had similar GDP PPP/capita, so roughly similar development. In 1970, Japanese real income was ~30% lower than now (Table 1: Reference Totals for Population, Income, and Inflation, 1885-2002), while real rents are about equal. Therefore, rent:income ratio is around 30% higher back then. (I'm assuming Tokyo rents follow the national trend) Current rent in Beijing is around 6,900.00 CNY (1-bedroom apartment city-center). Average salary is 198,714 CNY. Rent-income = 0.417 = 6900.00*12/198714 Current rent in Tokyo is around 147,991.20 JPY (1br city-center; same as above). Average salary is is 7,433,700 JPY. Rent-income = 0.239= 147,991.20*12/7,433,700 0.417/0.239 = 1.745. Rent:income in Beijing is 75% higher than Tokyo, while Tokyo at a similar stage of national development was 30% higher than Beijing. This is despite the Chinese Hukou system*, and the fact that there are 3 other "Tier-1" cities in China and many more large cities (while Japan is pretty centralized around greater Tokyo, and the only other megacity is greater Osaka). However, Chinese geographic inequality is probably higher, which may skew my figures. *The Hukou system cuts off government services like schooling and many forms of healthcare from migrants. This reduces rental demand (2) A more efficient way of discouraging underused land would be a land value tax, because it punishes all forms of underutilization proportionately, not just specific types. (3) In an interview between urban planner Alain Bertaud and host Tyler Cowen, Bertaud mentioned that when he worked in Indonesia, he found that informal land titles secured by a water bill traded at a 10% discount to formal ones, implying that an informal title with some formal backing is 90% as useful as a formal one. It makes me wonder what the cost/benefit ratios (and political possibilities) of formalizing property rights is compared to more effectively dealing with informal rights.

The colonial planning laws are not all stated....

Haha found it 😂❤

Listening to list ur creditably makes me want an Nigerian town planning history 101 (like who were the major actors, government initiatives, back to the time pre colonization and what the future of Nigerian town planning looks like now - also why they are town planners and not cities planners). I’ll look it up too.

Great content that is data driven. Good job!

Thank you for the video! I was wondering what your thoughts are on the Lagos Blue Line and its future, as well as the potential benefits of the Lagos-Kano corridor? It's quite hard to find in depth information online about these projects.

Very insightful and informative. Kudos

I hear your proposed approach for reducing the number of parties involved in eventual housing delivery with a view to reducing the cost of housing delivered which then makes housing more affordable, but I disagree with some of the points rather strongly. This is because while it is plausible in theory and may be an ideal approach for housing affordability, anything that involves concentrating power in the hands of Government (particularly the Nigerian Government given that they have shown no recent historical proof of being a decent custodian of resources) is very likely to lead to more rent seeking behavior and ultimately failure (as you pointed out yourself). Easy to see how Approach 3 for example will result in procurement fraud, where government cronies or government agents themselves with zero developmental track record get their hands on the land and end up not building at all, or building sub-par housing (we have seen this many times in different sectors). Approach 2 (higher property taxes) will lead to less private investment in land as private or institutional developers/RE investors will divert funds to alternatives like FX, foreign stocks, fixed deposits etc, which results in less real economy investment and will impact jobs in the RE and construction sectors (which together make up about 8% of Real GDP). I like Approach 1 and I see that as more consistent with the role of Government in allocating resources, monitoring and regulating. Curious about your thoughts on other approaches that do not involve government being the primary resource allocator, but as an enforcer of standards etc.

Really happy to see great, data-driven content around highly important subjects in Nigeria like Housing. Well done!

This was quite interesting! Are you planning to talk more in the future about informal housing?

Another video, yehh!!

Wooow, this is sooo informative and easy to understand and follow. Welldone.

At 10:25 you mentioned a tax on undeveloped land, im not an economy major but i think this is called a land value tax.

Thank you for your intelligent discussion and analysis, this country needs more of it

Congrats on 1K subscribers!

Finally! A channel about urbanism about Africa!! This is so awesome 👏🏾 I’m an American urban planning student and I’m so over having to hear about European and American cities.

This is amazing! I hope other topics will come in this format. Keep up the great work 👍

Beautiful video content! I am from Nigeria but currently studying environmental management in UK and it's nice to see stuff like this about Nigeria's transport situation getting acknowledged. One thing though, a lot of the educational data on this sort of topic tend to come from Lagos and Abuja. Do you think you can work on locations like Enugu? It would be interesting to see the effects of poor urban planning on lower density areas that may be looking up to the Big Boy's cities too. Keep up the good work, brotherly!

Just money laundering. It's Nigeria, anybody surprised?

So sad so many videos praised the system without any form of critical thinking. These days so many africans seem so much more focused on the image and other shallow concerns than the actual serving of peoples needs. We need more channels like it ! Good work !

We have similar problems in Karachi, Pakistan. Fuel Prices are skyrocketing. But we have less hope from Government to invite people towards Bicycles. And the people are not willing enough to demand such bicycling and walking infrastructure.

Love your videos honestly! Can you make a video (like a series) on land use/zoning in Nigerian cities, also reviewing the master plans or use patters in major cities? These are vital information that are very hard to find, example is case studies on how waste is managed, or reviewing the planning laws of each state. Thanks I enjoy your videos!

Your take on the sprawl is spot on. Nobody wants to commute with bicycle 10+ km both ways under super humid 30++ degree C heat. And other factors that you left out is safety, and this is beyond just cyclist lane. With such sky-high criminal rate and dangerous driving behavior (especially the okada drivers), I seriously doubt it would ever take off among common urban Nigerians.

Based on what's shown in this video, it looks like Abuja has a very low built density (FAR). Is that correct? Low built density is a common feature in newly built capitals in between 1960s to 1990s, such as Brasilia, which has made these cities highly unwalkable. By the way, love you detailed, informative, and organized videos. Keep up the quality work!!

this is a bummer. African cities like Lagos and Abuja are in dire need of mass transit, it's a shame the planning of the projects weren't executed to meet their potential. hopefully Abuja can build out the rest of its system to really get riders using the existing line

Good video. One thing I would note is that biking can of course connect to transit (and when it does, it can offer a travel time competitive with driving, especially on longer trips), but also, a lot of people can travel decently far on a bike in not a lot of time. The average person can easily pedal along at around 12-13 MPH which is a mile every five minutes, a pace that can really eat up distance without leading to too much exertion. In many communities, even with less optimal zoning, the average trips aren't much longer than a handful of miles so there truly is a huge potential for biking just as soon as the infrastructure is provided. Hopefully, you folks can get the momentum to get it done, especially as part of big projects to upgrade roads which offer the opportunity to do it right from the very beginning and not need to spend extra money later to fix it.

wow... i haven't been to abuja but I'm guessing one of the reasons it's like that is because it was a city planned by US developers whose cities are very car dependent.

Excellent video! Thank you. In my experience, rarely do people make such poor decisions without a reason. Everyone plays the fool sometimes. So who benefited? The builders? Politicians? Architects/Engineers? Why such ugly oversized stations? Attractive, orderly, functional cities with good architecture makes everyone’s life much more pleasant. This channel is welcomed.

Won't lie I was also disappointed when I didn't hear the "wahala be like bicycle" line , great video as always 👍

You summed it up in a great way! Should probably go get a bicycle asap😂. Would it be possible to make a video on zoning laws in Nigeria and how they apply in Abuja? That's if there are any Great video once again.

I always look forward to your videos 😀😀

Wow im glad their is a channel for nigerian urbanism

Great video.

i love these videos keep making them!!

Great video. I like how much similarity to my home city of Kyiv, Ukraine. Or to any other city with car dependency problem realy. We also had massive districts with millions of people build with an expectation of new subway lines, which never materialized in those areas. Or shift to the car focused development in 1990s-2010s. Or stasks of cars parked on right lanes. Or private minibusses called Marshrutka, very similar stuff to what you mentioned. Tho it gets better lately, hope it'll be the same for your city as well.

I agree!! Abuja is overwhelmingly a car city ! That needs to change!!!

if anyone's curious with the 40 minute end to end quoted travel time, 3 trains would give you a train every 28 mins...atrocious for a modern dedicated 2 track right of way

We have some Chinese infrastructure in our country. They failed pretty bad. The price was “cheap”. But if it doesn’t work at all it’s worthless.

Really interesting

I think that the comment about airports not being high-demand depends on context. I think that he's right in the African context where, not only are regional connections badly serviced/non-existent or are prohibitively expensive (Bulawayo to Johannesburg for example costs US$300 for a round trip, when London to Johannesburg only costs US$500). However, in Europe and America, airports are a good place to put transit as there are a lot of people who work in the airport and there are a lot of travelers that find this connection useful. As such, I think that you make a good point, we need African solutions for African problems. We also need to leverage what we have (i.e. building metro lines and stations along commuter lines that will deliver a good return on investment). I think that we also need to work on intra-African connectivity. Maybe this way the airport will be a valuable investment.

I hope the new REM system in Montreal (opening this weekend) does better