Thesis Defense - Zaharaddeen Saleh Ahmed (MSARCH)

Zaharaddeen Saleh Ahmed - M.Sc. Architecture

Assoc.Prof. Murat Şahin - Advisor

A Study of Street Network Configuration on the

Distribution of Non-Residential Land-Use in Abuja, Nigeria

Date: 21.08.2019

Time: 09:30

Location: AB2 103

Thesis Committee: 

Assoc. Prof. Murat Şahin,  Özyeğin University

Asst. Prof. Işılay Akkoyun Tekçe,  Özyeğin University

Prof. Çiğdem Polatoğlu, Istanbul Technical University

Abstract

Cities go through various changes in their growth over time, this is both in their physical urban form and in the effects of the form on every day activities. The functionality of the buildings and various land uses are considered artefacts in discerning the urban form. Historically, cities evolve their active centers through agglomeration and growth overtime. However, the middle of the 20th century also introduced new types of cities, from the industrial to the administrative. Abuja the capital city of Nigeria is among the few administrative capitals designed and constructed in that period. Embodying modernist planning ideals and inherited colonial urban policies.

The thesis investigates land-use changes from residential to nonresidential functions across two districts developed at different phases of the city, the district of Wuse II and Utako.  This is to determine the relationship between land-use changes (functionality) and street network hierarchy as well as how an administrative city is evolving and creating new high streets in hitherto residential neighborhoods.

The study utilized Space syntax methodology through analysis of the road networks at the scale of the city and the districts. Global and local radii of Choice and integration measures determined the probability of a street network to be passed through and the depth of each street to all other streets in the network. By layering the land use changes and the growth of the city between the first phase and completion of most of the second phase the study found a demonstrable relationship (correlation) between land changes from residential to nonresidential changes as well as in the clustering of these activities along streets with high integration in the urban grid. This thesis presents an analytic approach to understanding the changing urban form of a rapidly expanding contemporary African capital.