A Systems Theory of Urban Form Determinants in Nigerian Secondary Cities: Evidence and Implications

Urban form in Nigerian secondary cities has evolved through the intersection of pre-colonial spatial organisation, colonial planning interventions, post-independence political economy, and contemporary market forces in ways that are insufficiently theorised within existing urban morphology frameworks developed primarily in the Global North or in reference to Nigerian mega-cities. This dissertation develops an original systems theory of urban form determinants for Nigerian secondary cities, using empirical evidence from six secondary cities across the six geopolitical zones: Nnewi, Ilorin, Warri, Gusau, Maiduguri, and Jos. The systems theory conceptualises urban form as an emergent property of interacting subsystems including land governance, construction finance, cultural spatial values, infrastructure provision politics, and migration pressures, each operating at different temporal and spatial scales. Original theoretical contributions include a Nigerian secondary city form typology derived from cluster analysis of morphological data across the six case cities; a political economy of urban land speciation model explaining how informal land market dynamics produce characteristic form signatures in Nigerian secondary city growth areas; and a temporal phase model of Nigerian secondary city form evolution from pre-colonial core through colonial imprint to post-independence commercial intensification and current peri-urban sprawl. The empirical programme generates comparable morphological datasets from each city using a standardised spatial analysis protocol covering street network, plot structure, building footprint, and land use classification. The dissertation contributes an original urban morphology theory grounded in Nigerian secondary city evidence. Keywords: urban form, Nigerian secondary cities, systems theory, urban morphology, political economy.