City-Level Decoupling-Case Studies

CITY-LEVEL DECOUPLING: URBAN RESOURCE FLOWS AND THE GOVERNANCE OF INFRASTRUCTURE TRANSITIONS

vehicles. 10% of trips to Lagos Island are now made using the BRT. A series of boarding surveys conducted by LAMATA indicated that 195,000 passengers travel on the BRT-Lite on an average weekday. Within the first 6 months of the BRT’s operation, its buses had carried a total of 29 million passengers. The use of BRT buses has the potential to mitigate the environmental challenges associated with transport systems, especially in terms of reducing fuel use and consequent emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases typically emitted by private vehicles. The BRT system has contributed to reducing urban transport carbon dioxide emissions by 13%. Average journey times have also reduced significantly, in some cases by more than 50 per cent. Furthermore, passenger waiting time at stations has been cut from 45 to 10 minutes, reducing their exposure to air pollution and lowering their risk of contracting respiratory diseases. The major limitation of the scheme is that it is not able to meet demand at peak periods due to limited capacity. The successful performance of Lagos' BRT-Lite is the result of a holistic approach that has involved not only the provision of infrastructure, but also the re-organisation of the bus industry, private sector financing of new bus purchases, and the creation of a new institutional structure and regulatory framework to support it. Strong political commitment on the part of the state government together with good leadership within LAMATA ensured that the blueprint developed for the system was followed, and that the project was implemented swiftly.

14. Community-driven sanitation in informal settlements in Lilongwe, Malawi

By Lauren Tavener-Smith

Rapid urbanisation and associated growth in informal settlements has aggravated sanitation problems for the urban poor in Malawi. Estimates show that between 1987 and 2010, the urban population in Blantyre, Lilongwe, Mzuzu and Zomba tripled. 94 Faced with limited options for affordable formal accommodation, the largely poor urbanising population meet their housing needs through informal dwellings. Consequently the 'urbanisation of poverty' 95 is associated with a mushrooming of informal settlements. In Lilongwe, informal settlements expand and densify as poor landlords build rental dwellings on their plots to meet the growing demand for informal accommodation. 96 As part of the rental agreement, landlords provide sanitation services, usually by digging their own pit latrines. With an average of four or five dwellings per plot, a shared pit latrine fills up every 3 to 4 years. Given the problems with pit emptying in informal settlements, it is not uncommon for the full pit to be abandoned and left to decompose while a new pit is dug elsewhere on the site. 97 Continued reliance on pit latrines in the context of urbanisation and informal settlement growth incurs problems related to land-use competition, environmental contamination and sanitation- related health burdens. The periodic need to relocate latrines when pits become full means that

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