Research
Management of Sustainable Cities in Nigeria: The Imperative of Urban Governance
The 21st century is a century of cit ies. Over half of the world's population now lives in cities, and by 2050 this figure may rise to 70 percent globally (UN-HABITAT, 2010). The unprecedented pace of urbanization has had a profound impact on the number and size of cities and has created a phenomenon called “megacitiesâ€: (UN-HABITAT, 2007). This ongoing transformation to a global urban society offers an unprecedented opportunity to use the urbanization process as a catalyst for sustainable economic and social development since urbanization is a precondition for social and economic development (SDSN, 2013). State of World Population (2009) shows that the more developed countries are all highly urbanized; the least developed countries are all low on urbanization. However, the urbanization process in most cities of less developed countries heightens such conditions as lack of resources, poverty, inequality, the pervasiveness of slums and insanitation, overcrowding, housing congestion, crime and violence, and several other demeaning situations (Omisore et al., 2003; Ogunleye, 2005; UNEP, 2012, Adeboyejo, 2013; Ogunkan and Adeboyejo, 2015). This is particularly true of Nigerian cities which today are one of, if not, the greatest contributors to the urbanization profile of Africa (Adeboyejo 2013).
Spatial and Socio-Economic Dimensions of Street Children in Ibadan, Nigeria
Consequent to the widely recognized influence of rapid population growth on streetism, this paper examines the spatial and socio-economic dimensions of the street children phenomenon in Ibadan, Nigeria. The study analyses the intra-urban pattern of child streetism and analyses the characteristics of street children in the study area. The study participants are children working and or living on the streets of Ibadan, the administrative headquarters of Oyo state, Nigeria. The study enumerates street children in selected activity nuclei in urban high, medium and low residential densities. 10% of the observed number of street children was included in the survey using the convenience sampling method. In all, a total of one hundred and fifty-two (152) copies of questionnaires were administered to the willing street children. The study employs Z-scores to compare the intensity of the problem and ANOVA to analyze the variation in the incidence of street children within urban residential densities. The result of the ANOVA shows that with f=14.587 and p= 0.001, there is a significant difference in the observed variations in the incidence of street children among residential densities.
