TITLE:
Urban Land Grabbing Mayhem in Douala Metropolitan Local Council Areas, Cameroon
AUTHORS:
Tichafogwe Tende Renz
KEYWORDS:
Anarchy, Colonisation, Institutional Responses, Population Growth, Urban Space
JOURNAL NAME:
Current Urban Studies,
Vol.6 No.2,
June
28,
2018
ABSTRACT: Anarchical land conquest in developing world cities is virally infecting Cameroonian
cities epitome by its largest metropolis. This is what this paper
sought to portray of the successive augmentation of the Douala V Local
Council urban space distinct by a weird anarchy-driven population growth.
It posits that it is not just available unoccupied space but institutional indolence
has of recent hemmed in urban infrastructural disorder that has led
slums grow beyond bounds. Multi-temporal Landsat images for 1975 and
2015 and a Spot image of 1995 were used to determine the spatial colonization
and expansion land use/land cover analyses. Results were corroborated
with field information through field surveys using structured questionnaires.
Findings permitted us note that space colonisation in Douala V experienced
a 60.18% upward trend of built-up areas just in four decades (1975-2015),
with a 1.5% annual population growth rate. Implications on the urbanscape
have been an accelerated and severely degraded forest and natural vegetation
form the 1403% growth urban human surge in 42 years (from 57,000 1975 to
800,000 inhabitants in 2017). Douala V thus emerged as an “try and see” land
colonisation territory where new arrival of inhabitants inadvertently sowed
structural anarchy valued at 51% permanent and 49% temporary structures.
Noting that such disorder emanates from top-down urban governance and
management this study recommends that urban planning legislation concerning
must be inclusive of grass roots to guarantee involment as a canon of
sustainable development in modern and post-modern times.