In this blog, Lola Akande from the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, University of Lagos, examines why interdisciplinary research at the neighbourhood level is crucial for urban sustainability. All views are the author’s own and not attributable to SHLC.
The physical and natural landscape has always been at the centre of environmental discourses. From the trees to the soil, to animals, mountains, and the air, the environment remains a topic for serious deliberation. Man is arguably the most prominent element in the environment because humans inhabit the landscape; they plant, weed, grow trees, rear livestock, but unfortunately also pollute the environment. Humans are therefore central to all discourses about the environment because they are its caretakers. Every worthwhile discussion on the environment should put human action in the spotlight. In most parts of Africa including Nigeria, residents of growing cities are being confronted by acute poverty, where quality healthcare facilities, potable water, food and good road networks are grossly inadequate. Over time, this has tended to degrade the environment and many neighbourhoods within the city are steadily harming the healthy growth of the environment. The good news, however, is that neighbourhoods are addressing this challenge.
The University of Lagos Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development recently hosted a neighbourhood level research workshop aimed at strengthening the capacity of early career researchers across Nigerian universities to undertake neighbourhood level research. During the workshop, humans as the predominant inhabitant of the environment became the main theme of discussion.
This five-day workshop, funded by the Centre for Sustainable, Healthy and Learning Cities as part of the UK government’s Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) included, early career academics and researchers from eighteen universities across Nigeria. During the workshop, researchers were put into different groups and each group was assigned the responsibility of visiting and finding out the challenges being faced by the people of different neighbourhoods in Lagos with a particular focus on health, housing and education. Professionals from local organisations accompanied the researchers acting as intermediaries to help connect us with the residents. One of the goals of the workshop was to engage with residents of these neighbourhoods to discover their most important needs so that we could draw up research plans that could include and respond to their challenges.
"The neighbourhood level research workshop helped me to understand that neighbourhoods are about people, their lives and communities. During the workshop, we were able to compile a list of the needs of residents in the different neighbourhoods we visited with the intention of finding ways to educate relevant government agencies about the pressing needs of residents."
The neighbourhood level research workshop helped me to understand that neighbourhoods are about people, their lives and communities. During the workshop, we were able to compile a list of the needs of residents in the different neighbourhoods we visited with the intention of finding ways to educate relevant government agencies about the pressing needs of residents. At a post-workshop roundtable at the University of Lagos, workshop participants developed a document which could serve as recommendations to government on how it could provide assistance to people, working on a budget of three million naira.
For me, one of the highlights of the workshop was its attention on interdisciplinary research and engaging other disciplines. I felt the interdisciplinary focus was successful in broadening the scope and depth of our neighbourhood research. Speaking about interdisciplinary research at the workshop, the co-director of the University of Lagos Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development, Dr. Taibat Lawanson said that having researchers from different fields would help in broadening the horizon of workshop participants, and that making new friends, networking with people from different fields would promote greater impacts. I am looking forward to putting interdisciplinary neighbourhood research methods into practice!
This neighbourhood research workshop and fieldwork were hosted by the University of Lagos and funded by SHLC’s Capacity Development Acceleration Fund.