Urban agriculture and safe city concepts: palpable links for the urban poor in Ilorin, Nigeria
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Date
2022
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Faculty of Environmental Sciences, University of Ilorin
Abstract
Divers urban populations, including the poor, adduced urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) as essential food sources. Urban agriculture (UA) as a safe city concept is increasingly considered a building block in ensuring safe living and economic prosperity and as a leeway of returning the cities to city dwellers. Arguments favouring safe cities revolve around claims that they are more efficient, inclusive and sustainable. Integration of UA into the safe city concept provides an intervention to quadruplicate issues tied to livelihood, access to resources, knowledge and rights of the urban poor. Based on the preceding premise, this study assesses urban agriculture vis-à-vis strategies and contributions of UA to the livelihoods of the urban poor in Ilorin, with a view to enhancing a safe city. The study employed data from primary and secondary data sources for the methodology. Also, questionnaire administration, interview guide, personal observation and GPS all sufficed for the data instrumentation. Therefore, this study identified 11 areas within the Ilorin metropolis where UA is profoundly and widely practised. All these amounted to (144) UA sites surveyed. Descriptive analysis was employed to show charts and tables. Key findings revealed that nearly 15Ha of land was committed to UA in the Ilorin metropolis and spatial analysis through Average Nearest Neighbour Analysis (ANNA) revealed that UA sites were clustered and not randomly distributed. Also, the UA industry efficiently employs close to 902 persons annually and has raised the real income of almost 50% of poor people in Ilorin. The study concludes that city managers embrace broader responsibility by developing new ways of incorporating new UA functions in the urban planning system that would guarantee a safe city.
Description
Keywords
Food security, Safe city, Urban agriculture, Urban Planning, Urban poor
Citation
Aduloju, O.T.B.; Akinbamijo, O.B.; Bako, A.I. and *Anofi, A. O.* (2022): Urban agriculture and safe city concepts: palpable links for the urban poor in Ilorin, Nigeria.. Faculty of Environmental Sciences, University of Ilorin 3(1) 67-82