ABSTRACT
Onitsha is a city in southeastern Nigeria that is urbanizing exponentially, atypically without industrialization. The city has inadequate basic infrastructure, deficient spatial quality, and prevalence of urban poverty. Current planning policies and approaches have failed to improve the living conditions of the citizens, and which are mostly structured to benefit the political class. Onitsha comprises a conglomeration of markets run by self-organizing social systems that drive and define the exponential urban growth processes in the city. The city’s markets provide socio-cultural, socio-economic, and socio-political platforms for the majority of citizens in the city.
This chapter presents critical insights on the self-organizing dynamics of space production and negotiations of spatialities in post-colonial contexts while focusing on material flows in the city. It provides an understanding of how markets in Onitsha are inextricably interwoven with urban transformations, growth, and livability in the city. Findings show that the modes of Onitsha’s spatial production reflect emergent behaviors in various ways, as organic responses and survival mechanisms to extreme uncertainties emanating from entrenched colonial planning and governance logics in Nigeria. This chapter contributes to discourses on emergent dynamics and self-organization processes of urban growth in post-colonial urban Africa and further suggests potential strategies toward sustainable, livable, and equitable urban futures.
