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Mutations, a joint project of Rem Koolhaas/OMA and the Harvard Project on the City, explores the unstable urban conditions around the world at the turn of the 21st century, a tipping point at which the world's city-dwellers began to outnumber those in rural areas.
Publisher's blurb: "The city is in the process of mutation as globalization and urbanization transform both the environment and traditional architectural forms. "Mutations" presents an atlas of new urban spaces. Featuring work and texts by: Rem Koolhaas and the Harvard Project on the City, Sanford Kwinter and Daniela Fabricius, Stefano Boeri, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Nadia Tazi, Jean Attali, Moulier Boutang, Saskia Sassen, Bart Lootsma, and many others."
Mutations, a joint project of Rem Koolhaas/OMA and the Harvard Project on the City, explores the unstable urban conditions around the world at the turn of the 21st century, a tipping point at which the world's city-dwellers began to outnumber those in rural areas.
Publisher's blurb: "The city is in the process of mutation as globalization and urbanization transform both the environment and traditional architectural forms. "Mutations" presents an atlas of new urban spaces. Featuring work and texts by: Rem Koolhaas and the Harvard Project on the City, Sanford Kwinter and Daniela Fabricius, Stefano Boeri, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Nadia Tazi, Jean Attali, Moulier Boutang, Saskia Sassen, Bart Lootsma, and many others."
Mutations, a joint project of Rem Koolhaas/OMA and the Harvard Project on the City, explores the unstable urban conditions around the world at the turn of the 21st century, a tipping point at which the world's city-dwellers began to outnumber those in rural areas.
Publisher's blurb: "The city is in the process of mutation as globalization and urbanization transform both the environment and traditional architectural forms. "Mutations" presents an atlas of new urban spaces. Featuring work and texts by: Rem Koolhaas and the Harvard Project on the City, Sanford Kwinter and Daniela Fabricius, Stefano Boeri, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Nadia Tazi, Jean Attali, Moulier Boutang, Saskia Sassen, Bart Lootsma, and many others."
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CTT a Lee LCR oaPROPERTY
‘Africans are constantly rearranging their social, economic, religious, and domestic
lives in the process of consuming mare than they produce... Shifting designations
creates a seemingly permanent state of political ambiguity.”
Despite the presence of both land-use data collected at the regional scale and
the national grid system, a boundary for Lagos has never been drawn or
agreed upon. The lack of clear spatial boundaries has left open and unresolved
the question of where authority over the land areas resides, leading to
disputes in ristration ati Ue practice uf census
enumeration, Lagos Island is the only area in the city which maintained a fixed
boundary between 1911 and 1962, at 155 square miles (while its population,
according to written sources, multiplied threefold)? Far censuses taken
between 1901 and 1962, the national area covered increased from 18 square
miles to 27.22 square miles. The discipline of geography has failed to grasp
the single fact that the nature of accuracy and measure in Lagos is negotiable.
Geography and the settlement of property in Lagos cannot be assessed and
measured according to the fixed definitions of the census and the aerial
photograph. Property lines are continually being reassessed and renegotiated
in accordance with intersecting land laws, taxes, claims, and interests,
‘This structural skein camouflages its ordering system, but recognizes that
one’s right to reside and work in the city is Flexible and mutable,
‘The negotiability of property lines means that there is no fixed typology in
Lagos. Different types may be introduced or develop, but they are Invariably
subject to reassessment and reconfiguration.
1 and political a
PLOT
“The unit of property in Lagos derives from the Yoruba compound.
‘The compound is a collective property and consists of an assembly of
‘dwellings arranged in physical proximity. It is not strictly a typology,
representing instead a loosely bounded space wherein a group of interests
Coexist side by side and in agreement. Its collective ownership as understood
by customary law was hence not communal in the sense of being communally
built, managed, and used, Individual rights were protected, and once an
individual's land had been settled and bullt on it was ‘divested’ of its communal
use. Thus, under customary law, land could be transferable as an individualDespite this original flexibility, the compound has urbanized in Lagos as a
property bounded by a perimeter wall and arranged around a courtyard and a
communal alley. The compound develops through provisional occupation within
a series of boundaries, or as the proliferation of a single-cell compound.
As finances, means, and labor permit, the compound develops incrementally
ina variety of ways. The residential base is often supported by small-scale
businesses that operate adjacent to or in front of the dwelling, the profits
‘or materials of which are gradually transferred to residential additions and
renovations. The physical result is a high heterogeneity of use and function
at the scale of the compound, homogeneous and poraus space at the scale
of the neighborhood.
The compound has modernized into a lucrative form of rental property,
8°x 10° rooms can easily be built to accommodate a family or a few people.
Due to increased wealth and a new desire for individuality, the fission of the
single cell now contributes to a process of compounding, Compounding occurs
as 1) the construction of new rooms, and 2) the making of new surfaces,
vertical or horizontal planes, gratings, fences, and metal sheets in ever more
incremental layers. Compounding thus increases the amount of building
program, as new rooms collect more rent and new surfaces support new
businesses or functions. Like fission in physics, this process diversifies the
compound programmatically, minimizes exterior space, and densifies existing
spaces. Compounding demands a constant reassessment of urban and property
boundary conditions and of socially constructed space.
LINE
IF the difficulty involved in establishing property led to its physical delimitation
by walls, increased crime has transformed the property line into a means
to exclude outsiders and to enforce and police one’s property.
This phenomenon is not limited to the wealthy areas normally targeted for
crime, but occurs across the socioeconomic spectrum of real estate, from
‘koyi, Mushin, to Surulere. Though these areas were built according to
different spatial typologies, they have been homogenized by their shared
physical continuity, leveling the city into ane psychic environment,
The wall is typically constructed out of CMU blocks, barbed wire, shards of
glass and pebbles. A security gate is used to cross its threshold. Not only
individual plots are walled this way; streets and districts policed by area boys
and loral vigilante groups, oF neighborhood security are gated off with secure
checkpoints. The construction of walls and security gates throughout the city
hhas sparked an entire industry: steel reinforcing bars are regularly used to
construct gates and entry doors, while architecturally designed gates are
sought after by wealthier home owners.
The property line, originally a conceptual and abstract legal division designed
to divide, enclose, and exclude, has materialized into a vertical wall whose
surface has become an attractor for use, contamination, and the establishment
of new economies. The wall has come to be taken for granted as an
Infrastructure that supports and serves a host of economies and small-scale
industries. The wall itself can be used as the support for carpets, ar security
gates; in conjunction with a drain, it forms a thickened swath of space between
the plot/compound and the street. This space is occupied by vulcanizers, petty
traders, and can even accommodate sleeping in its width. The wall can also
become a three-dimensional barrier, with a depth of 3 to 4 feet, that can be
used as a marketable space,
WALL
The explosive growth that Lagos has witnessed in the last two decades—the
population rises by an estimated 1,000/day—has assigned to the wall a new
challenge. Today the wall is a machine for quarding land against occupation by
the poor, the masses, It has become more a way of controlling surface than a
mechanism against violence,
In Lagos, public space is continuously being occupied in new ways.
Pavements have become crowded with hawkers, food merchants, mechanics,
tailors, hairdressers, and all kinds of entrepreneurs. People jostle anarchically
for turf, while “life” seems to thrive in the congestion of the streets. It is not
clear which comes first: the rather extravagant and perhaps greedy delimiting
of land in order to exclude and canstruct one’s own interior “world,” or the
density of Lagos street life
‘The interior that the wall defines does not necessarily remain static
Compounds regenerate and occasionally reinvent themselves, but, as with the
large tracts of walled-in land that abound in Lagos, re-emerge as suburbia,
In Lagos, suburbia is not confined to the periphery of the city, as is often the
norm; it implodes in the city.
Is Lagos staged? Could it be that Lagos's urbanity is artificially induced, rather
ironically by the same forces that seek to diffuse it? Could it be that Lagos's
highly urban street life owas its existence to an implosion of suburbia?TAXABLE OCCUPATION OF LAND
The lack of clear zoning for industrial uses beyond the compounds of the
multinational companies, and the incessant compounding of the entire cit
has pushed the labor market to occupy the boundaries of private property and
urban infrastructure. Road embankments, the underside of fl
tracks, and the city’s multiple shorelines have been colonized
secondary industries and services—cement block f
‘mechanics, hairdressers, roadside markets, and so on, This lining of the road
system, most evident in the filing of the circular voids of cloverleaves,
‘demonstrates the basics of space-planning: highway columns are used as spatial
dividers, foundation pads as workable su and open areas the
‘markets or the collection and storage of materials. The undersides of flyovers
are used for a range of purposes from industry, to storage, to car parks which
can be conveniently fenced off between road columns. These land pieces belong
either to the federal military government of Nigeria or to stat
This type of territorialization of space represents a temporary but legal
occupation of land without ownership, a general lining of the urban fabric.
Near Jankara, Lagos's largest market, four cloverleaves have be
a recycling exchange, The recycling market has been located on the land sin
the 1860s, except for temporarily displacement by the Federal governmen
during the construction of the highway (1973-78); the government has
respected its land rights in exchange for a tax. The market has adapted the new
highway infrastructure to its highest use potential, The order of the highway is
inline with the production processes that take place there: small assembly
operations take place beneath the flyover, where groups of young men assemble
lanterns, cooking pots, and other metal wares, Others work gers
throughout the city, collecting scrap metal and plastics and assorting them into
material piles, Storage and warehousing of these scraps takes place in the
area of the interchange. From scrap collection to sorting to design to asse
ale, the entire chain of commodity production occurs within the highway
jange. The Jankara Interchange services various corporations—Universal
Steel is @ regular purchaser of scrap metal, and major plastic manufacturers ar
also regular customers—suggesting that the transactions between lower and
Lupper levels of the economy are converging on temporarily settled federal land.
In Fact, the gradual institutionalization of Facilities such as Jankara suggests
that the urbanization of capital in Lagos follows a different and more efficient
logic than that of the redundant and inefficient highway constrBOTTLENECKED LAGOS
BOTTLENECKED
‘The terms "go-slow” and “no-go” are part of a popular lexicon replete with
‘nomenclature that expands the scope of traffic and movement to the level of
urban consciousness, Go-slow describes the ubiquitous traffic jam: lulled in
congestion, captive to the road's breadth, and thriving with entrepreneurial
activity. The go-siow is a transient condition, swelling diurnally with the
usual peaks of urban movement. The no-go, on the other hand, is less a
condition than a place, Defined by failed planning, bankrupted initiative,
regular banditty, ut physical collapse, the no-go stalls circulation in a space
of maximum vulnerability. As such, the incomplete road or constricted
intersection is in a way recuperated, becoming controllable—and extremely
valuable—real estate. Jam-space, the totally negotiable, usually illegal and
hugely productive space of the traffic jam, is not something to fix, solve, or
even rationalize. Jam-space cannot be controlled or short-circuited, only
bypassed. Rampant entrepreneurialism charges the bottleneck’s enormous
physical friction with an even greater social traction,
‘As roads jam, their traffic spills into surrounding areas, expanding motorable
terrain by default. The road hemorrhages at points of maximum inutility,
subjecting neighboring communities and adjacent landscapes to the perils and
opportunities of dispersed road traffic. Bottlenecks encourage detouring,
turning “neighborhoods"—the white and gray space on the map between
thickly drawn expressways—into an infinity of potential routes. Any road
can be a feeder road, a collector, or an arterial. The detour is an inverse of
positive proximity theory: rather than relying on proximity to fixed
infrastructure for residual economic benefits, the detour redirects the
infrastructure's patrons to under-served areas, Jams and detours allow more
Of the city to be accessed more of the time,
Groups normally neglected by road traffic sometimes take advantage of the
detour. Area boys, for example, purposefully destroy road surfaces to
redirect road traffic into “ambush areas” or under-patronized commercial
districts, In 1996, the 600 km Onitsha/Owerri road East of Lagos “caved in
‘on several spots, making motorists detour in selected places, driving through
farmlands and remote villages, crisscrossing abandoned terrain to reconnect
to the highway. Many lives were last in the process, vehicles endangered
‘and many lost their way in far flung communities, Drivers drifted across thelandscape like in the olden days." Lagos's detours are usually subtle,
sometimes dramatic, but never merely coincidental. Sometimes the detour is
a self-administered flood that forces people off an expressway and into a
neighborhood. Sometimes the diversion might be a roadway fire. At other
times it might be coded as an arrangement between drivers and distributors,
inereby the drivers stop in traffic so that jammed passenger cars can
subjected to roadway hawkers.
Lagos’s slowness has hardened. The expressways, originally dumped on the
city to bind disparate destinations and origins, are now almost completely
lunrecognizable to the planner's eye. On a map they still look like they
organize the city. The view from above seems to make sense—"the city is
Interconnected.” But at each of the plan's intersections this omniscience
collapses. The Lagos “street” Is inadequately described by thrawaway terms
like “channel,” * jons artifact,” “flow space,” or “arena for social
expression.” streets; instead, it has curbs and gates, barriers
and hustlers that control separate landscapes. Some areas might look like
streets; they might even look like superhighways. But even the Lagos
superhighway has bus stops on it, mosques under it, markets in it and
buildingless factories throughout it
Lagos system of circulation as it is any particular place,
The spaces of the city are popularly described in terms of stoppages,
shortages, storage, stalling, overcompensations, and material depositions
Its roads are not plan lines between points, but perhaps its most elastic and
variable scapes, made more enabling by local modifications which deny the
road's insistent linearity—guardrails are removed, jersey barriers put aside.
At all bottlenecks, the road is converted to allow movement in a maximum
umber of directions,5 a=) aa eon oS
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oshopt
Everybody seems to agree, albeit for different reasons, that Oshodi embodies
Lagos’s identity. Despite having escaped historical accounts, today Oshodi is
the most intense marketplace in all of Lagos, and perhaps In all of Nigeria,
Located at the intersection of the Apapa Oworonsok! ring road and the
city’s north-south spine, Agege road, it as transformed existing sites of
the city’s transport infrastructure—an Incomplete on-ramp and an almost
defunct railway,
At the precise point in the metropolitan diagram where the northern half of
the ring road meets the railway spine, the micro-scale of the plan
hemorrhages. The two ends don't quite snap together. Oshod is a failure of
construction mechanisms to connect closing segments, a cloverleaf
intersection with only two-and-a-half leaves. The aborted Oshodi cloverleat
system respects the right of way of the Nigerian Rallway Corporation but
ignores the logic of the flow of vehicular traffic between perpendicular axes.
The dysfunctional off-ramps, otherwise impediments to circulation, have been
Fecuperated as programmed cul-de-sacs, But Oshodi somehow works
Tentative and even officially temporary, Oshodi's “incomplete” layout in many
ways increases the number of things it can do. Taking advantage of the
Interplay between the two different traffic patterns—a fast-moving upper-
level overpass, and the slow-moving pedestrian alang the rail line—many
services and amenities have colonized the off-ramps and roundabouts,
Taken together these form a complex overlap of programs: a train station,
turban and suburban bus stations, hauling stations, several different markets,
auto garages, a school, at least one church, and hundreds if not thousands
of service stalls. Left incomplete, the intersection has a deleterious effect on
metropolitan traffic “ride-times.” But when measured in terms of efficiencies
other than speed, the intersection is enormously functional: Its no-go turns
congestion into destination,
shod is probably—who really knows?—the longest continuous ribbon of
private/public property in Lagos.® All along its length, the roadsides have
been annexed and overrun with trading activities, An independent consulting1p, MetroBusiness, reports that almost half of the roads at Os!
been taken over in this fashion, Oshod’s traders and transp:
have literally annexed the transport infrastructure, the rail-line and Agege
road, and have even taken measures to construct new roads and new right~
of-mays. They have turned infrastructure into a marketplace, non-place into
productivity. Claimed by multiple interests, traders, councils, hawkers, and
agrebos (area boys), as well as the NRC, Oshodi effectively belongs ta no one.
Continually interrupted by the train, Oshodi sustains itself in a state of flux.
On a twenty-four-hour cycle, it continually remakes and replenishes itself
‘through the accumulated exchanges of naira and goods and by the
movements of its individual mobile traders. The swath of territorialized land
hhas been divided into anywhere from twenty to thirty parallel strips, each
h varying degrees af temporariness, permanence, and flow. Book-ended
more permanent concrete markets—on the west the electronics market, on
the east the distribution point—the market becomes mare temporary as it
condenses towards the center. Though its typology is visible in other Lagos
markets, the linear organization at Oshodi makes it particularly succinct.
Due to the instability surrounding ownership or claims on the land, the degr
of permanence of trading infrastructure corresponds to degrees of mobility
In previous accaunts by planners and geographers, Oshodi has symbolized
the dysfunctional city—the aura of the last remaining but dying colonial
institution, the railway. Today, however, Oshodi provides further proof and
evidence for the city’s collective resistance. Targeted for “public
enlightenment” (read Operation Sweep) by LAWMA, blacklisted by
trafficologists (read enforcement), and recently in the process of being
repossessed by the Nigerian Railways Corporation, Oshodi persists in spite
of all these regulatory incentives, transforming defunct railway bars into the
cit 3t productive market,
CercaIn 1978, Alaba International Electronics Market was squeezed out of Lagos, supply-side opportunities, and it soon became the largest electronics
‘dumped on a swamp and left to its own devices. Since then, the market has ‘market on the continent.
{Grown to include 50,000 merchants that net over USD 2billion annually, ‘Alaba used this success to build a town around itself. Generating huge
Officially described as an “unorganized sector", Alaba accounts for 75% of revenues for the Ojo Local Government Council, the market has earned @
West Africa's electronics trade. reputation as the region's source for "second-class or fake electronics
Like most af Lagos’ peripheral markets, Alaba Is an orphan. Begun as part imported from Asia, This reputation, however, has not handicapped business.
of Mushin’s Alake market, Alaba had little significance unti its electronics The Alaba Market Association recently raised NSO milion to build Ojo an
merchants started selling speakers in the 1970s, As music amplification “ultra-modern secretariat and car park." The Association also donated the
became more popular, the market took off, moving loads of original books and television sets that fill the market-funded local library. Ojo's fire
reconditioned and sometimes bogus Panabis, Gibson and Philips speakers station, electric substation and even teleconmunications tower were
through its many stalls. The '77 FESTAC event raised demand for audio constructed at the Market Association's expense.? Outsourcing domesticity
speakers at the same time that it put pressure on the market to move away to the surrounding area, Alaba has effectively transformed its host town inta
from its busy neighbor, the National Stadium. So Alaba began a westward a bedroom community
exodus. First, it went to Mile 2. But that location only exacerbated the Left alone, Alaba International Electronics Market has sustained rampant
event's effect on the market because by increasing the traffic exposed to the growth. And, left alone, it has had to reconcile this runaway expansion with
‘merchants at the same time that it increased the merchant's proximity to the Increasing vulnerabilities. After an initial big-bang and several years of
‘Apapa Port supply. Later that same year, the market was moved further west capitalism-without-Keynes, the market is becoming self limiting. It is now
along the Badagry Expressway, to the small jungle-enclave of Ojo. building its first fence—a 23 million naira wall to separate the market area
ChieF Magnus Ubochi, chairman of the market association, says that the move from its host city, Having consolidated its edges, the market has had to adopt
to Ojo was crucial, giving Alabans “a place where they could grow to infinity."* alternative strategies to grow. In addition to building vertically, Alaba is
And they nearly di. “Little Japan’—as Alaba has been dubbed—was )__metastasizing: mini-Alabas have turned up at Oshodi, Mile 12 and, most
adopted by the Badagry Local Government Area in 1979, Combining itself recently, Abuja. Backed by an American investment company, the 600 plot
with the local electronics market, the 2,800 displaced Alaba traders soon Abuja electronics market is being laid out on 20 hectares along the capital's
had the second largest market in Lagos State, and far and away the most spine, Airport Road. It will be named “Alaba New.’
profitable one. A large fire and the austerity measures of the 1980s
weakened the market's activities as the importation of consumer goods was Nor A city
minimized, But parallel trade with Benin and new concrete lock-ups buoyed Alaba looks like a city. A"total self help effort’, the market has generated its
Alaba through the eighties, establishing an operating Formula based on own system of address, its own type of street, its own provision of churches,
Circumvention of traditional supply chains and vigilant self-defense. In the its own banks, its own brand of democracy and even its own form of justice.
mid 1990s the Nigerian Port Authority relaxed its import tariffs, enabling But itis a city without housing, without women (the market is almost
Alaba to benefit from two supply sources nearly equidistant from the market exclusively male) and without children. It has no nightlife because it has
site: the (official) Apapa Port and the (unofficial) Benin border town of Seme ‘9 nights its “hours of operation” are from Bam to 6pm. Its, of course,
Straddling the two sectors maximized the market's responsiveness to closed on Sundays.As a business, Alaba acts on its own prerogatives. The Market Association
funds itself with a monthly security levy, donations by executive members,
and fines collected from unscrupulous merchants, In turn, the association
‘gives money to the local government, the poor, and even takes care of its
past leaders. The DIY effort funds borehole drilling, latrine construction,
and public telephone booths. The association is paying for the new perimeter
fence, television towers, street gutters, electrical transformers, a telecom
system and even a security vehicle to patrol the market. But the Association
does more than just service the market with infrastructures; it's also building
a new secretariat and courthouse. Members of the group have developed new,
‘more vertical building typologies to increase market densities. New stall types
integrate a warehouse on the first floor with an office on the second;
merchandise Is kept in the first floor lock-up from where it can either be
loaded directly onto transporters or set out on display. That is, the shops
are both wholesale and retail outlets.
‘The market site is organized in three divisions: the "fancy section” (lights,
lampposts and electrical fittings); the “electrical materials area” (transformers,
wiring, bulbs and spare parts); and the "pioneer market” (appliances,
generators and circuitry), Nearly 50% of this merchandise is secondhan¢—
brought in from clearinghouses in the Middle East, Europe and Asia
The preponderance of used goods has led to parallel Industries of near-
‘manufacture that operate across the market's sections. Reducing the bogus,
spent, or out-of-order appliances to heaps of circuitry, transistors, and
plastic shells, entrepreneurs organize whole alleyways into mechanical assays.
AA production line of electricians, welders, painters and technicians then works
in tandem to produce electronic hybrids of pieced together radios, TVs and
generators. Not so much a factory, the secondary market is more a
disassembly field within which all things have different values assigned to
them: mechanically functioning BUs (Built-Ups) and nonfunctioning but
potentially valuable parts or CKDs (Complete Knock Downs).? These material
movements occur between sections, across streets and alongside buildings.
AAs the market thickens, its interstices become increasingly productive,
‘aban pangaea 3. Pak Lago. he Gy he ope,These gaps aren't just leftover slack space. Alaba never had a plan to
‘abandon, or a spectacular failure to celebrate. Perhaps this is because Alaba
is predicated on terrain, not streets; its structures are more closely tied to
landscapes than cities. Although itis provisionally bound to the line of the
highway it straddles, the market benefits from patterns of circulation and
‘communication that are irrespective of any road, Many of the market
boulldings are not fronted by a sidewalk or curb, Instead, all scape is equally
navigable by pedestrian, wagon ar truck. Materlal movements in the market,
vary tremendously in scale: huge shipping containers vie for space with
circult-filled buckets. The indeterminacy uf Uhe road's breadth allows a
‘maximum number of things to happen on it. At Alaba, a road might have
Generators, aggregate piles, parked cars, Inventory, waste and even a
Portable prison adjacent to one another.
AA disciplined skyline matches the free-for-all on the ground plane. The first
generation lock-ups are single-storey CMU structures with 10x10 and 10x20
Footprints. The lock-up performs only one function: it protects merchandise,
{In turn, merchants bring their own infrastructures to this basic shell.
Alaba is said to have the highest concentration of generators in the world.
Portable generators are propped up on tires just outside the lock-up doors,
while larger fixed units are put in welded rebar security cages and left in the
street. Communications systems are also left up to the stall owner.
On approach, the market first appears as a thousand makeshift radio towers
swaying way above the rooftop's satellite dishes. All hoopla about cellular
toting nomads leapfrogging into the twenty-first century is immediately
checked. The Alaba system Is as successful as it is perverse: because
Communication is the crux of trade, merchants spend huge sums on private
radio-wave towers to insure cellular access, Attempts by telecom operators
like EMIS to consolidate the market's network with base stations and shared
antennae are met with skepticism.‘ In a business that directly sources
inventory from markets in Singapore, Taipei, London and Dubai, the
telecom masts are a necessity. IF networking has formal consequence, this
Is its apotheosis,
NOTA TRIBE
At Alaba's center are its two most public institutions, each Imposing different
aspects of discipline—one psychological and one political, The first, a blue
Pepsi (‘The Choice of a New Generation’) ship container riddled with irregularly
shaped, rebar-grated holes, is the town prison. It sits conspicuously on the
main street that passes through the market. The second, a simple shop,
houses the International Market Association Electronics Alaba (IMAEA) court.
It is inconspicuously located just opposite the prison.
A legion of uniformed and plain-ciothed security personnel operates between
the punitive and judicial branches, The IMAEA has put the two ends of
Nigerian aw enforcement trade to work on the same beat: the vigilante and
the rent-a-cop. What in other contexts would remain at opposite ends of the
legal spectrum are here brought under the same umbrella. Having the two
systems in place increases the market's stability by keeping the two patrols
suspicious of one another. What's more, the association regularly cycles
through both area boys and private security companies to keep temporary
alliances from forming between criminals and the patrols. When infractions
are identified, perpetrators are either held in the prison or taken directly
to the court and dealt with by representatives of the IMAEA. Hearings are
held on Fridays.
It follows, then, that the largest committee of the Market Association
controls punitive measures: the IMAEA calls it “The Task Force”. But this
committee is only one of a long list of IMAEA groups that regulate market
activity; it should not, for example, be confused with the similarly named
“The Tax Force." Although a chief leads the market, itis hardly a tribe
‘The chief is elected for a three-year term, and Is allowed a limit of just two
terms. The larger organization is made up of a 40 member executive council
consisting of business leaders, the more authoritative elders council and
10 elected officials that head the various “departments.” These include a
development committee, a finance committee, a public relations department,
a publications department, an electricity committee, the tax and task forces,
a works and development committee, a security department, and even quality
control groups and trade organizations.*
These council groups are, of course, complimented by sub-committees
The Electrical Dealers Association of Nigeria, EDA, a trade group associatedwith the IMAEA, was formed to pressure the Apapa Port Authority to control
the number of counterfeit and fake products coming into the country. Fake
products are bad for business—or at least the publicity associated with
them is. Mr. Celestine Obioguatu set up a sub-committee within EDA to tackle
the PR problem. To get at the problem directly, he insisted on creating a third
tler of acronym—the Anti-Adulteration Committee (AAC); the AAC reports to
the EDA, which in turn reports to public relations department of the AIEA.
The AAC has the power to enforce market laws against fakery. In its first year
of patrols, the Anti-Adulteration Committee seized and then burned over
185,000 naira worth uf bogus electronics, The EVA implores prospective
buyers to visit thelr secretariat for inquiries into the pedigree of the market's
products, and even offers limited warranties on electronics bought from its
member stalls.*
{nA New Paradigm for Urban Development’, a paper delivered at a World Bank
conference in1931, A. L. Mabogunje proposed that the lines between the
informal and formal sectors contained the greatest potentials for new
Uurbanisms. Calling for institutional radicalization,” the very figure of old-guard
African urbanism suggested that temporary fusion between informal processes
and "mature" institutions might be read as a blueprint for progressive urban
strategies.” As ambitious as such a suggestion might be, Alaba is already there,
In fact, Alaba doesn't just enable the “temporary” sector-bridging that
‘Mabogunje proposes, it hardens such arrangements. They become durable, not
radical; the IMAEA is everyday evolving a more and more dynamic relationship
with mature institutions
Banks, for example. In the last ten years, 21 lending institutions have formed
in the market. Aside from providing seed loans and micro-credit services for
aspiring electronics dealers, the banks have become part of the market’s
operating system, By maintaining a database of each vendor's performance,
the lending institutions are able to alert the IMAEA of its member's activities.
Transgressions and discrepancies can be identified and punished, and
successes rewarded. The market association depends on these databanks to
make forecasts and develop policy. in turn, the banks rely on the market to
design and establish loan structuring schemes specific to the area's merchants.
SCOUTING
“The Japanese experience in imitative technology cannot be easily duplicated
but is instructive. The country should be prepared to pay the high cost of
modern technology and management. Our laws on patents and copyrights are
premature, We should, with a sense of urgency, encourage and condone
industrial espionage and piracy."*
‘Mimesis is part of the Alaba formula: find your best men, give them plane
tickets to Talpel, Moscow, Singapore, Mexico city, Sao Paolo and Dubai
(the Klondike of free market success) and have them take notes. To go to
Redmond, Palo Alto or even Tokyo (in 2000 at least) would be a waste of time.
Chief Ubochi calls these mercantile prospectors his “bay scouts.” The scout
scans the globe on market-funded missions of capitalist reconnaissance.
In this way, the IMAEA continually updates its operations with emerging
models of late/post capitalism based on other sector-straddiing markets in
Southeast Asia, Russia, and, most recently, the Middle East, These markets
are all atthe forefront of what Mabogunje had termed “fusion” and what
others might call corruperation,
Alaba has long recognized the advantages of being between sectors.
Even geography reinforces its position. Being between Apapa port and the
Benin border means that it can be between official and unofficial—direct and
parallel—trade routes. This increases the number of supply channels it can rely
on. As good as these sources are, however, the last ten year’s phenomenal
{growth is more the consequence of a third channel: the airport.
“We are connected globally,” says Ubochi, pointing to the sky. Ifa lot of cheap
Sanyo stereos comes up for bid in Singapore, Alaba's corps of scouts qoes to
Singapore. f a wholesaler folds in Delhi, they go to India to clear any
remaining stock. The 30 to 50 containers a day that arrive at the market are
filled with new and used goods from Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan,
China, italy (gas cookers), Spain (freezers), and the United Arab Emirates
(video games, generators). Japan used to be on thelist but has been dropped
for the simple reason that Lagos-Tokyo flights have become prohibitively
expensive. To compensate, Alabans get their Japanese products in the United
Arab Emirates.AAs Sultan Ahmed Sulayem, chairman of Jebel Ali and managing director of
Dubai Ports Authority puts it: “(at that time, we were fascinated by what
Singapore was doing in developing its port, So we sent people to Singapore
towards the end of the 1960s to see what we could learn,” The plans
remained on the drawing board as the country did not have the necessary
funds to ‘translate them into reality’ until the discovery of oil. Money
generated by the country's abundant petroleum reserves was sunk into huge
infrastructure projects including the Jebel All Free Trade Zone.
Like Alaba, Dubai's only real asset is its relative position: halfway between
Singapore and London, halfway between Moscow and Naivobi. The ity
couldn't help becoming a hubs and, of course, all hubs can't help becoming
duty-free cities. Shopping replaced petroleum as the country's distinguishing
feature as Dubai put itself on the map with both the world's largest shopping
festival and the world’s tallest hotel
Dubai's geography, once its greatest advantage, is now actually limiting its
growth, But at the moment of its apotheosis, the Emir has rescued his
emirate with a new geography—electronic space. In the year 2000 Dubai will
launch itself into an electronic infinity with the christening of
dubatelectroniccity.com,
Like Alaba, Dubai's population is mostly male (70+"%) and mostly From afar.
Expatriates are far and away the majority in the UAE, mostly coming from
the India, the Philippines and Pakistan, And like Alaba, Dubai benefits from a
branded, if unbridled, form of capitalism. To attract investors, the Dubai
government did the usual: the standard urban cocktail of the “pro-business
package.” But to keep clients in the desert they took the off-the-shelf
business package and hyperbolized its every promise. In Jebel Ali Free Trade
Zone, foreign investors are not only assured 100 percent owmership, but also
enjoy a renewable tax holiday for15 years during which they do not have to
pay income, corporate, bullding or land taxes. The Airport Free Zone has an
almost identical pro-everything gist, but promises an exemption on import
duties and allows the free movement of capital in addition to the standard
list of freebies,
ALABAS
Clifford Geertz once wrote that the informal market was doomed to archaic
inefficiencies. “The trader,” said Geertz, “is perpetually looking for a chance to
a make a smaller or larger killing, nat attempting to build up clientele to a
steadily growing business."!? Geertz was troubled by the bartering, haggling
and ‘inefficient’ price structuring mechanisms of informal environments,
Since 1963, social anthropology has spent enormaus amounts af energy
describing how such systems are, in fact, based on enormausly powerful and
effective social organizations that are nothing if not efficient netwarks,
The most recent cases—the Alaban conditions—present the most terrifying
potentials. Unfettered, and unleashed, Alaba’s severe social program is
‘matched by an incredibly compelling post-urban example:
Within the globalization regime, there Is an emphasis on speed, incessant
signification, unimpeded capital flows, the hyper-reality of credit and fiscality,
and the amplification of micro-dynamics as keys to profit. Accordingly, the
deployment of new modalities of organization acting outside juridical,
parliamentary and ‘moral’ constraints are increasingly required. The
consolidation of all institutional life produces its marginality that is a space
outside the rules and norms which must be turned to at times when the norms
are unable to do so. The marginality constitutes a locus through which
disparities, problems, power conflicts and procedures can be ignored, mediated
or circumvented. Globalization has provided a vast new range of apportunities
for economic and political actors to operate outside increasingly outmoded laws
and regulatory systems, as well as to spawn new relationships among them.
African cities exude an availability to these opportunities precisely because they
appear outside of effective control, and thus anything could happen."!?
Alaba is almost nothing. Its most striking feature is its flatness, Only recently
has it had to bother with the maison domino, But its skyline is still somehow
striking. All around, 30 meter antennae sprout from between the market stalls
Huge satellite dishes sit precariously on puny rooftops. Cell phone ownership
is incredibly high, and the country's greatest concentrations of what would
otherwise be called Mall Boxes Etc. can be found at Alaba. In fact, on an
off day, when the market is empty, It looks more like a communications center
than a commercial one.“a total self-help effort"To Lagos
In The Coming Anarchy, Robert D. Kaplan
contends that the contemporary West African
condition is sufficiently radical, unfamiliar, and
intense to warrant a new round of postcolonial
“exploration,” with different intentions and a
more intensive methodology than the
nineteenth-century campaign prosecuted on the
same turf. Lagos, Nigeria is an ideal first port of
call. A pressure cooker of scarcity, extreme
wealth, land pressure, religious fervor, and
population explosion, Lagos has cultivated an
urbanism that is resilient, material-intensive,
decentralized, and congested. Lagos may well be
the most radical urbanism extant today,
but it is one that works.
In the past, Lagos has been the beneficiary
of the best and brightest minds of Western
planning; with a few exceptions, all have
determined that Lagos has none of the
infrastructures, systems, or even environmental
resources to support population levels
considerably below current levels. People and
products move, networks are maintained, shifted
and hardened, and made resilient. The survival
strategy of the Lagos agglomeration might be
better understood as a form of collective
research, conducted by a team of eight-to-
twenty-five million. The hypothesis and purpose
of this “investigation” is debatable, but
statistical analysis shows an asymptotic
condition. Every graph of the city population
(resource usage, “urban safety”) takes one of
two turns in the last ten years charting Lagos:
either off-the-chart explosion or a newly
horizontal, infinite approach to zero. Asymptotic
behavior seems to indicate a terminal condition, a
steady state, suggesting that the Lagos condition
might simply be twenty, fifty or a hundred years
ahead of other cities with more apparently
familiar structure and lifestyle. If the terminal
condition of urbanization, or of capitalism, has
been a long-awaited milepost, the subject of
fantasy, then the scenario and strategies to be
found here may be instructive to other urbanisms
following Lagos to the asymptote.