City profile: Kaduna

• Origin and early history of Kaduna.
• Physical characteristics – geography, weather and climate, location.
• Chronicle of developmental stages – colonial period, independence and post-independence period, contemporary times.
• Planning and evolved urban form.
• Contemporary challenges and recent initiatives at confronting the challenges.

Kaduna’s colonial origin and function as an administrative town ensured that it was well planned and had good and well distributed urban facilities and services in the early years of its existence. However, the pressure of urbanization that has seen the city expand beyond its planned limits into hitherto rural settlements along the urban fringe has today given the city a different character from the once celebrated well planned and beautiful town. On the one hand you have the earlier settled areas of the city with good roads, quality housing and other necessary urban facilities while on the other you have the new expansion areas that have grown outside of formal planning control and are characterized by haphazard development, poor quality housing and lack of basic urban infrastructure and services. It is within this context and the scarcity of resources that the city authorities are struggling to cope with the challenges continually posed by rapid urban growth. The article emphasizes recent initiatives of the government aimed at confronting these challenges through a critical examination of their implementation and the outcomes therefrom.