Enforcing Building Set Backs as a Viable Strategy for an Emerging City

Abstract

For any emerging city to grow into a healthy and safe city, development guidelines and regulations which serve as a vital strategy should be considered and be adhered to. Most importantly the town and country planning laws which are purposely designed to regulate various development aspects that includes, zoning practices, occupancy type building height, as well as building setbacks among many other regulations, depending on the problems of a particular locality. Suleja in the last three decades has rapidly experienced increase in size with numerous number of buildings springing up, largely as a result of its proximity to the new Federal Capital Territory; unfortunately most of the buildings were haphazardly placed with less or little regard to local planning regulations. This paper is aimed to explore how non adherence to building setbacks affects the immediate dwelling units of an area. A field survey and oral interviews were used in three core areas of Suleja to evaluate the level of non-adherence of building setbacks, and its resultant effects. The research findings identified several problems arising from non-compliance to building setbacks regulations, which includes poorly lightened and ventilated interiors of dwelling units, lack of access roads linking buildings with main roads, lack of outdoor spaces for parking vehicles and unsafe environment which all leads to a poor city growth.