Evaluating the conformity of informal land subdivision with the planning law in Benin metropolis

•Informal land subdivision attributes broadly conform with the State's Planning Law.•Plots sizes of 450-900 m2 dominate residential land use types.•Unregulated land subdivision results in conflicting land uses in Benin City.•Informal land subdivision neglects the provision of land for public uses.

Town planning law is a regulatory framework for guiding the spatial growth of cities. As a land subdivision regulation, it embraces all development parameters in urban areas. But locally adopted land subdivision standards appear incompatible with the existing Planning Law. Evaluating the conformity of informal land subdivision standards for residential and non-residential uses with those of the existing Planning Law, land subdivision attributes were collected from four neighbourhoods and compared with the minimum approved standards. Independent-sample t-test statistics for each of the selected neighbourhoods shows no significant difference in their Mean Scores. The significant values (two-tailed) in the t-test output tables of the selected communities were consistently above the required cut-off of α = 0.05 which suggest that informal land subdivision attributes statistically conform with those of the Planning Law. Key planning implications of unplanned land use patterns that have emerged and policy options to tackle them were suggested.