THE IMPACT OF EFFECTIVE LANDUSE ALLOCATION ON RESIDENTIAL PROPERTIES

CHAPTER ONE

 INTRODUCTION

     Background to the Study

Land use are recognized as key drivers of environmental change (Shi et al, 2009) with significant implications for many international policy issues (Liu et al., 2010) and a central component in current strategies in managing natural resources and monitoring environmental changes (Minale and Rao, 2011).

The  causes,  consequences   and  control of land use change have become issues of immense importance to the present-day world. The reasons for societal interest in land use and land use change are  many.   Land  use both reflects and defines where economic activity takes place, and where and how communities develop (Goetz, Shortle and Bergstrom, 2005).  Economic conditions, population, other land uses both public and private, and the size of the urban area continually   change,   subjecting   the   urban   land   market   to   forces   of  perpetual   adjustment (Balchin, Bull and Kieve, 1995).As world population surges, there has been a general increase in the demand for land in cities around the globe. Of particular note is the demand for residential land. It has been  emphasized that   residential land use, among the several contending  urban  land uses, is the biggest consumer   of land  in  urban  centres  (Alonso, 1960;  Edwards, 2007;   Kabba and  Li, 2011;   Uju   and   Iyanda,   2012;   Adegoke,   2014).  Under   normal   situations,   increase   in population elicits a proportionate increase in the demand for land for residential uses, and the occurrence of commercial, industrial, institutional and transportational land uses is spatially linked  to   residential  development.  Consequently,   any   changes   in   the   general  use   of   land affect residential property rental values.

The   metropolis   of   Kaduna   in   Nigeria   has   gone   through   structural   changes   in   its physical  form,  population,   economic   and   social  constituents  over   the   last   century  largely owing to urban growth. This had engendered changes in land uses in the metropolis (Saleh et al., 2014a; Saleh et al., 2014b). The rapid urban growth and proliferation of human activities in Kaduna metropolis, Nigeria, is accompanied by different types of land uses and their conversion from one type to another  most   often   in  contravention   of   land   use   planning.  Incompatible   combinations   of various types of land use are commonly found adjacent to each other.   Intra-urban migration of residents within Kaduna metropolis has resulted in irregular changes in land uses against urban planning regulations and this in turn affects residential property rental values in diverse  ways (Ajibuah, 2010), (Aliyu et al., 2013).

Research work carried out in the area of land use and property value in Nigeria has been quite considerable in recent times, although much of the research studies mainly focused on the determinants of land uses and determinants of property values separately.  The crucial issue of properly defining the factors that bring about changes in land uses and meticulously analysing how such land use changes influence residential property rental values in a major Nigerian city has not been addressed. Additionally, most of the research studies on land use and property values in Nigeria were undertaken with the aid of analytical and technical tools that have been found to have some   limitations   that   could   affect   the   quality   of   results   and   deductions   made   from   the analysis of data collected for such  studies.