Agricultural development in Nigeria: the constraints and potentials

Despite numerous attempts by urban and regional planners to develop societies and make their environments conducive for living, livelihood in some parts of the world remains miserable due to chaos and social unrest. The continuous socio-economic and political unrest that enveloped most under developed world has been attributed to poverty. A number of attempts have been made around the world to overcome poverty but mostly have been in vain. This is most likely due to non-utilization of effective means of poverty eradication. History has revealed that agricultural development has been the best approach for improving living standard of the citizenry. Creation of agricultural villages enables the realization of objectives of rural planning by stimulating economic growth, jobs creation and improving living standard. This research was carried out by reviewing literatures on agricultural development in Nigeria, simple GIS analysis and a simplified survey approach. Problems and challenges of agricultural development in the country was reviewed and analysed. A simple agricultural land use planning model is proposed with case study of a rural planning area selected based on its characteristic so as to determine the practicability of the model. This study area is Igabi Local Government Area in Kaduna State. Detailed descriptions of the area are discussed. All factors that affect assessment of the area are analysed. The first stage was to determine Potential Agricultural Area (PAA). The second stage involves assessment of the past and the existing agricultural practice, the availability of the infrastructure, market trend, the socioeconomic characteristics of the inhabitants and the preferences of the people. The physical and socioeconomic characteristics of Igabi revealed that the area is very suitable for agricultural development. This is similar to most part of the country due to their similar characteristics. This means that if the effective agricultural practices is adopted, the country will be self-sufficient in food production which will insure food securit

A conceptual framework for development of public health oriented environment planning and design measures with focus on childhood obesity

There is a worldwide concern about increasing non-communicable diseases such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, asthma and depression related to obesity in urban population. The built environment has an important role to support human health. Characteristics of the built environment can be modified to influence and facilitate or hinder public health. The rapid development of major towns and cities in developing countries producing urban sprawl, lower densities, environmental pollution, inconvenience and unsafe public spaces as well as transportation infrastructure that encourages car ridership over active transportation has altered the built environment in ways which effect health negatively. Urbanization in developing and less developed countries, therefore, is linked to rising obesity and incidence of metabolic syndrome. For instance the Malaysian Ministry of Health states that just over a quarter of Malaysian school children were obese and overweight and have the tendency to become obese adults. This research will outline and identify the significant variables concerning the built environment and childhood obesity by examining previous literature studies. There are three major aspects where urban planning and design can most effectively influence childhood obesity, namely, physical activity, community interaction and healthy eating. These three aspects address the principle risk factors for contemporary non-communicable diseases. Hence, the current research will focus on the three mentioned aspects as the keywords to extract the relative factors and indicators associated to built environment and childhood obesity. As the final outcome this research will construct a conceptual framework to serve as a basis for developing a public health-oriented built environment with focus on childhood obesity

Intersection of landscape, anthropocene and fourth paradigm

This review explores landscape science in the proposed age of the Anthropocene and Fourth Paradigm. Both the Anthropocene and the Fourth Paradigm put landscape science to task, due to the severity of landscape challenges. The article aims to link the concepts of the Anthropocene, the Fourth Paradigm and landscape sustainability in the 21st century. Different sources of publications and information were used to analyse, synthesise and explain the state of landscape research. We searched Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge, Scopus, and Google Scholar for contents on this article's key themes - globalisation, urbanisation, the Anthropocene and the Fourth Paradigm. We argue that globalisation and urbanisation are the key driving forces behind landscape change. These driving forces represent the scales of human impact on landscapes. Landscape science plays a major role in the age of data revolution and unprecedented landscape change. The review suggests that landscape scientists and landscape societies should chart a new course for landscape research to exploit the benefits of data to advance landscape sustainability

Criteria for urban sprawl / land use expansion

The vast growth of development in urban ares without control was spread out to urban finge and become a sprawl. In the other hands, sprawl is a term commonly used to describe one or both of the several phenomena. Firstly, the phenomena where development far beyond a region’s historic core, the type of sprawl is not growth. Growth is an increase in number of people in place. The sprawl is just the redistribution of those people from one place to another. Secondly, the development that is extremely automobile-oriented that is usually due to street patterns and/or design that encourage walking and very low density. There are three types of urban sprawl which is low-density continuous sprawl, ribbon sprawl, and leapfrog development sprawl. The sprawl city causes of several effects, there are four indicators that express socioeconomic changes related to sprawling which are migration, urbanization level, non-agricultural labour force, and rural industrialization. Migration as a percentage of population related to immigration or emigration of inhabitants. The urbanization level is a proportion of urban population with regard to total population and the non agricultural labor force as the percentage of employment in industrial and services activities. The environmental impact of sprawl spans local, regional, and global geographical scales. For example, the cumulative effect on energy consumption and air pollution of individual suburbanites and exurbanites commuting back and forth to work are considerable and global in significance. Using the Analyical Hierarchy Process (AHP), this research purposed to come out with the list of criteria influencing urban sprawl and classification of factors based on weight of contribution significance

Spatial planning and decision support system for urban metropolitan planning and monitoring: a case of Klang Valley, Malaysia

Planning methodology has changed over the years following the shift of emphasis from producing plan, which described a state of affairs expected of some future date, to one acknowledging the continuous and cyclical nature of planning. This necessitates planning be based on the identification of needs and goals, the formulation and evaluation of alternative courses of action and monitoring of adopted programmes. It can be traced that the development of planning support system run parallel from the ‘database’ to ‘information’ approach, starting from a focus on applied science in the 1960s through a profound consideration on the political process in the 1970s and to an emphasis on communication in the 1980s. The dynamic nature of planning and monitoring of development in Klang Valley, the fastest growing region in Peninsular Malaysia, apparently requires a ‘tool’ for continuous evaluation and analysis of current environment as well as the capacity for future development. Apart from managing the comprehensive GIS database, evaluation becomes an essential step in the planning process especially in selecting the appropriate development scenario alternative to be implemented. As such, the concept of Integrated Land use Assessment (ILA) was introduced through the “Application of GIS for Klang Valley Region� (AGISwlk) project. The ILA model developed is implemented through incorporation with the use of What-if Planning Support System, a scenario-based, policy-oriented planning support system. A user interface is also developed to ease the access and preparation of data from the AGISwlk database to run the ILA model and generate alternative scenarios. The introduction of ILA as an integrated land use planning approach that applies the GIS analysis capabilities while supported by the use of planning support system (What if?) is seen as a good alternative for achieving better and more rational decisions. The methodology was developed and organized based on the GIS spatial analysis process and planning support system framework as well as the identification of policy and strategy to be used as guideline and direction of study in achieving the desired output. The developed model is expected to dynamically support the preparation of the Klang Valley Regional Master Plan

Conceptual design for an integrated geosimulation and analytic network process (ANP) in gentrification appraisal

This paper presents a conceptual framework for geosimulation of the New-build gentrification process in an integrated approach. The combination of Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE) and Geographic Automata Systems (GAS) facilitates to translate the expert Knowledge into model rules. Analytic Network Process (ANP) is considered as MCE that addresses the relative importance of criteria for New-build gentrification as a complex urban phenomenon. It will be used to determine the different weights of each parameter in every time elapse. GAS which unites Cellular Automata (CA) and Multi-agent Systems (MAS) provides an excellent tool for modeling New-build gentrification. The transition rules are proposed as a combination of land use transformation and residential decision for housing area. The land use change is based on human-agent effects (local authority, neighborhood’s property value and developer) and residential decision is the adaptation of stress-resistance hypothesis defined by Benenson (2004). The integrated approach is believed to provide a more accurate real-world urban modeling and simulation that can highlight the systematic inequalities of urban context based on the theory of New-build gentrification