CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
An urban area implies an area with diverse and spatially dispersed land uses. These land uses attract and generate movements to and away from them. Consequently, the more land uses an urban area has, the more diversified or greater the socio-economic activities, mobility conflicts vis-à-vis congestion. These movements will be constrained if the location of the land uses is not planned. Urban area requires adequate planning and control in order to ensure harmonious development and functional efficiency of its uses.
To ensure adequate planning and orderly development of urban facilities and services there must be development control mechanism. As population in the urban area increases, urban planning becomes more critical and the pressure on urban facilities is high. According to Oyesiku (1997) the forms and patterns of distribution of structures in general to promote the good health, accessibility, convenience and harmonious land use in environment area functions of a considerable extent of the right and methods of dealing with land. Due to rapid urban growth and mixed land uses in Uyo urban, there is an increase in land use problems such as blighted structures, rising costs of land, flooding, incompatible uses, overcrowding and congestion, etc.
In Nigeria, though policies used in controlling urban land use development have been implemented. These policies are Land Use Act of 1978, Urban and Regional Planning Law 1992, Housing and Urban Development Policy of 2002 and land use planning and control measures have been introduced to improve urban land use planning and urban development. Despite all these laws and policies, urban land use problems still persist in Uyo. It is against the above background that this work seeks to examine urban land uses in Uyo urban.
1.1 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
In Uyo urban, there seem to be agglomeration of most of the land uses such that there is a clustering in space. Similarly, the allocation of space to most of the land use types usually does not take into consideration the effect cause on other land uses. These effect are overcrowding, traffic congestion, flooding, pollution etc.
Another urban land use problems in Uyo is the uncoordinated locations of functionally related land uses, examples are the location of filling station near a commercial or residential building such as Total, Mobil, Keybros filling stations all along Ikot Ekpene road, Winmos, Nossien, NNPC filling stations along Oron road etc. The low level of public awareness and enlightenment on the provisions of Uyo Master Plan (1988) and Building Regulations (1998) for Uyo capital city led to the development of urban land uses contrary to the set goals. Property developers see the existing Uyo master plan and its provisions as a restrictive imposition on the development drive of the people.
1.2 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
i. How is the prevailing nature of land uses in Uyo urban?
ii. What are the nature of land use management in Uyo Local Government Area?
iii. What are the measures for improving land use situation in Uyo urban?
1.3 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF STUDY
The research work is aimed at examining the land use in Uyo urban in order to pin-point the problems inherent in the area that are associated with urban land use control and to determine whether there is any significant relationship to the people perception of planning and attitude towards land use control with the specific objectives as:
(i) To enumerate the problems/conflict arising from land use pattern in the study area
(ii) To find out the number of land use categories and their total area coverage in the study area
(iii) Establish whether the location of unauthorized structure have specific spatial patterns.
(iv) Establish the degree to which present physical development complies with or deviates from the approved layout plants of Uyo urban.
(v) Examine the nature of land administration in the Uyo urban.