IkotUduak Episode: Stormwater Management as a Challenge in Sustainable Development of Urban Residential Communities in Calabar

Abstract

The fact that cities provide cultural and economic benefits that rural regions are unable to offer has been the principal push-factor for rural-urban migration since the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom. In Africa, 14.9 percent of the continent's population lived in cities in 1950, but by 2000 the percentage was 37.1; and the projections for 2030 are that the percentage will increase to53.5.Correspondingly, the rapid shrinking in the percentages of the continent's rural dwellershas been observed: 85.1 percent (in 1950), to 62.9 percent (in 2000), and 46.5 percent (projected for 2030). All these indicate that the picture of urbanization in Africa is that of conurbations that are under intense pressures to expand; in order to accommodate the influx of rural immigrants. In the case of Calabar in Nigeria, territories that had previously beenperi-urban rural communities are frequently being converted into urban residential communities. IkotUduakurban residential community, the subject of this study, is one of such territories in Calabar. Since Calabar is a coastal settlement with very heavy rainfalls, one of the principal ecological problems of urbanization is stormwater management. The study has shown that, atIkotUduak urban residential community, poor management of stormwaters has resulted invery severe cases of gully erosion in the shallow flat valley of the territory. With the application of successful conceptual models (that had already been experimented in the city as far back as the 1980s), together with modern green infrastructure devices forstormwater management, this disaster could have been averted. In conclusion, the ecological disaster has resulted in destruction of the urban landscape, elimination of the territory's potential in urban agriculture and substantial damage to private property.