ABSTRACT
FOUR miles from the centre of Lagos, by a bus terminus and suburban station, a road turns off the main northbound highway into the village of Suru Lere. Where it crosses the railway lines, for fifty yards, stall-holders have gathered along the curb, attracting the travellers as they walk home from the bus stop. Beyond is the centre of the neighbourhood: stained concrete faςades back onto cluttered yards, and unmade side streets peter out by bungalows let out in lodgings. Further on, the road runs humped and potholed between rows of mud and breeze-block cottages, some half finished, the doors and windows at uncertain angles, and ends under the shady trees of a country village. South of this road, and west of the highway out of the city, is ‘New Lagos’—the estates developed by the L.E.D.B. Colour-washed in ochre, pink and green, the houses march out in their contemporary uniformity against the bush. There are four kinds of development: freehold plots, for which the Board provides service roads; freehold houses; a worker's estate; and the rehousing estate. The first two are designed for the new professional class of the capital—the freehold houses, of two to six rooms, costing between £1,200 and £3,000. The worker's estate is reserved, in principle, for tenants earning less than £300 a year, and rents are subsidized. It is very similar to the rehousing estate, except that the streets are laid out less stiffly straight. Across one end of these estates runs a new highway, Western Avenue, linking the deep water port of Apapa directly with the northbound route, and nearby are the site of the Mainland Hospital and the new National Stadium.
