An Original Theoretical Investigation of the Social Production of Space in Nigerian Urban Informal Settlements: Implications for Building Technology Intervention

The social production of space in Nigerian urban informal settlements involves complex, actor-driven processes of self-organisation, negotiation, and incremental construction that conventional building technology frameworks fail to adequately theorise, limiting the effectiveness of technical interventions in these settings. This study develops an original theoretical account of the social production of space in Nigerian urban informal settlements and its implications for building technology intervention, drawing on Lefebvre's theory of the production of space, Actor-Network Theory, and post-colonial urban theory. The theoretical framework is inductively developed from a comparative ethnographic study of three informal settlements in three geopolitical zones: Ajegunle (Lagos, South West), Barnawa (Kaduna, North West), and Diobu (Port Harcourt, South South). Eighteen months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork produced primary data through participant observation, 90 semi-structured interviews, and spatial mapping of construction activity patterns and actor networks. The study identifies three original theoretical constructs: Contested Incremental Spatial Claim (the contested, step-by-step processes through which residents establish and extend territorial claims through building), Material-Social Negotiation Assemblages (the actor-networks through which building decisions are negotiated between material constraints, social relationships, and market forces), and Vernacular Technical Rationality (the locally embedded technical knowledge systems through which informal builders solve structural, thermal, and services challenges without formal professional input). These constructs generate original predictions about the conditions under which building technology interventions succeed or fail in informal settlement contexts, tested against intervention case data from 15 upgrading projects in the three settlements. The theoretical framework is proposed as an analytical foundation for community-based building technology upgrading programmes in Nigerian informal settlements.

Keywords: social production of space, informal settlements, building technology intervention, Nigeria, Actor-Network Theory