LandsValues and Urban Neighbourhood Classification A Case Study of Benin-City, Nigeria

Abstract

The uncontrolled growth and exponential expansion of Nigerian cities have generated problems of urban management in terms of urban integration, serviceability, sustainability and governance. Associated with these management problems is the absence of explicit and acceptable mechanism for urban neighbourhood classification. This is done-in developed countries where land values are used as indexes of sociospatial segregation and differetiation. Unfortunately in West Afrian Countries, there is no agreementon the similarities or the interrrelationships between land values land use and social class. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to explore the similarities between the structure ofland values and urban neighbourhood distribution in a geographical location, its socio-cultural antecedents and its rapid growth and expansion in recent years. Land value data were collected from sixty neighbourhoods using stratified, systematic and rnulti-stage antecedents and cluster sampling techniques.
Principal component analysis extracted two main dimensions, which jointly explained 87;63% of the "total variance, and classified Benin City into two on basis of inixed land use only.  implied that though land values could show the urban spatial structure and forms it was inadequate for urban neighbourhood-classification as the social morphology of the city was omitted. ln addition, commercial, and institutional land uses were found to be more diagnostic of urban structure than the residentml. implied that it was partial and inadequate to diflereiitiate urban neighbourhoods with predominantly mixed hand use setting with residential land use Only.