Port Harcourt
management and a lack of forward planning. Recreation appears to be dominated by church going and playing or watching football.
The prime use of transport in Port Harcourt is for getting to and from work. In general it is expensive (in relation to incomes), inefficient and dangerous.
21.11 SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT - HOUSING
Housing is the most obvious demonstration of Port Harcourt's poor social infrastructure, and indicates why the city so manifestly fails the majority of its citizens. The housing reality for most people is four to six people living in one small room of less than 10m². Moreover, the house is in a compound that does not have a water supply for much of the time, where each person shares a toilet with thirty to forty others and a bathroom with perhaps more, where the overall population density is from 1,000-2,000 persons per hectare, and where the only open space is the street.
Despite this reality, government housing policy appears to concentrate on the creation of GRAs, government housing schemes that provide houses with rental values of above N40,000 p.a., and a few inadequate "resettlement" schemes of small "flats"
(bungalows) which are supposed to rehouse people evicted from illegal waterside settlements (only a few dozens of expensive houses when what the city needs is thousands of additional rooms every year to ensure that the illegal housing problem gets no worse).
Port Harcourt has failed to even attempt to provide decent housing to its citizens. This is because economic power does not lie with the majority of citizens who are poor and who therefore cannot affect the free market in housing: the minority of citizens are rich and it is their spending power that influences housing policy. Because income is so badly distributed capital investment for housing is concentrated on building a few large houses for the elite minority, and no small houses for the poor majority. If incomes were better distributed economic rents could be charged at the bottom end of the market stimulating the construction of affordable, if basic, housing for the majority.
To improve housing conditions marginally the government needs to encourage the construction of 10-20,000 two-room houses with water every year for 10-20 years, at a cost that is unlikely to be less than US$4-6 billion. A lot of money, but which would, in the right economic conditions, greatly stimulate the local economy. Similarly, other parts of the social infrastructure of Port Harcourt have developed in response to market forces which are dominated by the minority economic elite, for instance there is no water because the elite can afford sink bore holes, diverting capital away from public water projects.
21.12 THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT
Because the social infrastructure of Port Harcourt has developed in response to the needs of the economic elite the urban environment is poor.
Domestic Water and Sanitation standards are low because there is no sewage treatment, no treated water, no piped water (for most of the time), and garbage collection and treatment is badly managed. As a result easily preventable diseases such as hepatitis A, diarrhoea, gastro-enteritis, typhoid, intestinal parasites and food poisoning prevail and, because of poverty and poor health facilities, can be fatal especially amongst children.
Domestic overcrowding is a serious problem. Population densities range between 1,000 and 2,000 persons per hectare in many residential areas of the city. Average room
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