Regenerative Architecture: A Theoretical and Design Framework for Urban Regeneration in Nigeria’s Declining Industrial Cities

Nigeria's industrial cities, including Aba, Nnewi, Kaduna, and Kano, have experienced significant deindustrialisation since the 1980s, generating deteriorating built fabric, redundant industrial sites, declining residential conditions, and the erosion of urban economic vitality that collectively constitute an architectural and urban design challenge for which regenerative approaches are urgently needed but theoretically underdeveloped in the Nigerian context. This dissertation develops an original theory and design framework of regenerative architecture for Nigeria's declining industrial cities, making contributions to regenerative design theory, adaptive reuse scholarship, and industrial urbanism in the Global South. The theoretical contribution develops regenerative architecture beyond its current application to ecological building design, extending it to the urban scale as a theory of systemic built environment renewal that restores ecological, economic, social, and cultural vitality simultaneously through intentional design intervention. Original theoretical components include an industrial urban metabolism model that maps resource flows, material stocks, and social-ecological relationships in Nigerian industrial city contexts; a regenerative threshold theory identifying the conditions under which declining urban areas can be regenerated through architectural intervention versus those requiring more fundamental social-economic reform; and an adaptive reuse value matrix calibrated to the specific characteristics of Nigerian industrial building typologies including weaving factories, motor spare parts complexes, and colonial-era commercial godowns. The design framework is applied to three industrial urban regeneration design projects in Aba, Kaduna, and Kano, demonstrating the framework's capacity to generate context-responsive regenerative design strategies. The dissertation contributes original theory, a validated design framework, and three demonstrated design applications. Keywords: regenerative architecture, urban regeneration, industrial cities, adaptive reuse, Nigeria.