Lagos As A Three-Dimensional City: Rethinking Spatial Governance And Subterranean Development

I strongly recommend that Lagos begin to think of itself as a three-dimensional city. Urban functions should be deliberately allocated across three spatial planes: above ground, at ground level, and below ground. The objective is not the indiscriminate construction of tunnels or elevated structures. It is the development of a system of spatial governance that assigns each function to the level where it can operate most efficiently, safely and sustainably.

Cities that grow without a coherent spatial philosophy eventually confront a hard limit: the surface can no longer absorb the competing demands placed upon it. Lagos has reached that threshold. The daily struggle for road space, the friction between commerce and mobility, and the relentless competition for every available metre of ground all point to a deeper structural problem. The city is still being planned and governed largely as a two-dimensional surface, even as its population, economy and infrastructure needs have long