Redressing The Recreational Land Deficit In Benin City: The Opportunity And Potential In Iyaro-Urubi
Keywords:
Benin City, Greening; Liveability, Open spaces, Recreation, Urban land useAbstract
Urban planning affords cities the opportunity of accommodating all land needs for living, working and recreation. This helps to promote environmental sustainability and urban liveability. The apparent under-provision of recreational land use in Benin City, one of Nigeria’s most populated urban centres, suggests a shortcoming in the spatial configuration. A redress is important under the present conditions of climate change particularly because research reveals that the city is challenged by inadequate greening and open spaces. One possible strategy for redress is to utilise every available opportunity such as identified by this study in the 0.92-hectare parcel of land at Iyaro-Urubi. The site allows Benin City to create the first recreational park in that location. Primary and secondary methods are used in the study. The city’s recreational land need is established by reference to planning practice in established jurisdictions whilst residents’ perceptions were sought using a questionnaire survey on the related issues of the adequacy of recreational land provision in the city; whether or not more space is needed; and whether or not the study location is better suited for recreational use. The findings indicate a great inadequacy of and need for recreational land space. Furthermore, respondents mainly agree that recreation is a greater need at the current time in that location. Again, new recreational space has not been provided since the 2015-2030 Sustainable Development Goals call for the creation of "inclusive, accessible, green and public open spaces" by Goal 11.7 on sustainable cities and societies. The study concludes that Iyaro-Urubi possesses the potential to serve, and would better serve, recreational purposes because it is located in a deficient area; where there is a need and where land of such a size is not easily available.
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Copyright (c) 2024 Ndubisi Onwuanyi, Geoffrey Ogbonna Nwodo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.