Impact of Road, Water, and Electricity on the Growth of Small Urban Centers
Chapter One
OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
The objectives of the study are;
- To ascertain the impact of road, water, and electricity on the growth of small urban centers
- To ascertain the contribution of water, road, and electricity to Nigeria’s economy
- To ascertain the relationship between urbanization and road, water and electricity
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
The state of water and sanitation services
About 2 of every 10 people in the developing world were without access to safe water in 2000; 5 of 10 lived without adequate sanitation; and 9 of 10 lived without their wastewater treated in any way.453 There have been gains, but despite the many global commitments, notably the U.N. Decade for Water and Sanitation, access to water and sanitation lags far behind the milestones set in the 1980s. Nor do aggregate trends in the 1990s give comfort. The share of people with access to these services in Africa and Asia where the world’s poor are concentrated has fallen, remained constant, or increased only slowly. Innumerable city and town studies confirm the UN-Habitat Report’s key message that water and sanitation services are too often failing communities. Full-pressure, “24-7” water supply remains a pipe dream in many cities. Because a quarter to half (and more) of urban water supply remains unaccounted for, many cities are turned into leaking buckets. The limited number of network access points must be widely shared, which dramatically increases waiting times and often simply overwhelms the system. Rural infrastructure often goes to seed: more than a third of existing rural infrastructure in South Asia is estimated to be dysfunctional. Poor people bear a disproportionate share of the impact of inefficient water and sanitation services. Fewer poor people are connected to a network. When they do have access, the installation has to be shared among many more people. And the prices they pay are among the highest, generally more than those paid by more affluent households connected to the piped system. The price differential is partly a result of inefficiencies the inequitable practice of subsidizing piped water, lack of scale economies for independent providers, or worse, providers taking advantage of poor people’s lack of choice. But some of the price differential can also reflect the flexibility and convenience of services offered by independent providers—no connection charges or access to quantities of water that are more affordable for poor people.
Performance indicators of urban water supply systems
Before evaluating the performance of urban water supply system it is important to develop appropriate performance indicators. The following are suggested performance indicators for evaluating urban distribution systems
(EWRA WaterUtility Journal 1:31-40, 2011) The indicators of urban water supply system are grouped under water resources performance, physical performance, and operational performance. Water resources availability and the availability of own water is mainly categorized under the water resource performance indicator. The capacity of storages, quality of the transmission and distribution lines and the density of the metered customers are taken as physical performance. On the other hand loss management, the operation and maintenance as well as quality of water supplied fall under operationalperformance.A study set out to assess the performance of two urban water supply utilities inTanzania shows there are serious water supply problems in the districts under study. The assessment was based on two main indicators which are the quality of service and unaccounted for water. The quality of the service and UfW has been cited as some of the major factors which reflect the performance of many water utilities. Poor service quality as measured by the water quality, billing efficiency and customer care, affects consumer willingness to pay and consequently the performance of the water supply utility. Methods used in the study included documentary review, household questionnaires, key informant interviews and field observations. The results show that accessibility and reliability of water supply in Muheza town is inadequate compared to Korogwe town. On average customers receive water for 8 hours per day in Korogwe and 5 hours per day in Muheza. Water supplied by the respective utilities in the two districts is far below the total demand. More than 80% of customer complaints in both towns were about water quality, water shortage and customer relations. Poor billing practices and old infrastructure have resulted in high UfW of42% in Korogwe and 47% in Muheza . The conclusion, therefore, was that the customers were not satisfied with quality of services and that the UfW was higher than the generally accepted value of 25% suggested by the World Bank.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research design
The researcher used descriptive research survey design in building up this project work the choice of this research design was considered appropriate because of its advantages of identifying attributes of a large population from a group of individuals. The design was suitable for the study as the study sought to the impact of road, water and electricity on the growth of small urban center
Sources of data collection
Data were collected from two main sources namely:
(i)Primary source and
(ii)Secondary source
Primary source:
These are materials of statistical investigation which were collected by the research for a particular purpose. They can be obtained through a survey, observation questionnaire or as experiment; the researcher has adopted the questionnaire method for this study.
Secondary source:
These are data from textbook Journal handset etc. they arise as byproducts of the same other purposes. Example administration, various other unpublished works and write ups were also used.
Population of the study
Population of a study is a group of persons or aggregate items, things the researcher is interested in getting information on impact of road, water and electricity on the growth of small urban center. 200 residents in Ikeji, Lagos state was selected randomly by the researcher as the population of the study.
CHAPTER FOUR
PRESENTATION ANALYSIS INTERPRETATION OF DATA
Introduction
Efforts will be made at this stage to present, analyze and interpret the data collected during the field survey. This presentation will be based on the responses from the completed questionnaires. The result of this exercise will be summarized in tabular forms for easy references and analysis. It will also show answers to questions relating to the research questions for this research study. The researcher employed simple percentage in the analysis.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Introduction
It is important to ascertain that the objective of this study was to ascertain impact of road, water and electricity on the growth of small urban center
In the preceding chapter, the relevant data collected for this study were presented, critically analyzed and appropriate interpretation given. In this chapter, certain recommendations made which in the opinion of the researcher will be of benefits in addressing the challenges of road, water and electricity on the growth of small urban center
Summary
This study was on impact of road, water and electricity on the growth of small urban center. Three objectives were raised which included: To ascertain the impact of road, water and electricity on the growth of small urban centers, to ascertain the contribution of water, road and electricity to Nigeria economy, to ascertain the relationship between urbanization and road, water and electricity. In line with these objectives, two research hypotheses were formulated and two null hypotheses were posited. The total population for the study is 200 residents of Ikeji, Lagos state The researcher used questionnaires as the instrument for the data collection. Descriptive Survey research design was adopted for this study. A total of 133 respondents made up civil servants, businessmen, students and youths were used for the study. The data collected were presented in tables and analyzed using simple percentages and frequencies
Conclusion
It is hopeful that the research would stimulate other studies particularly from the urban and regional planning and that the results and findings would be found to be useful contribution to knowledge. This study has expanded the research frontier in urban and regional planning by introducing new dimensions and concept in the road, water and electricity. In particular, it has reinforced the importance of accessibility, demand, supply, location and influence that road and water network has on commercial property values.
RECOMMENDATION
The technique was neither adequately considered by previous measures of accessibility nor was there any earlier study in Nigeria that adopted the technique as part of approach to measuring road network impact on commercial property values. This study is therefore a great contribution to knowledge in this regard and it is hopeful that it would open more research in this direction
REFERENCES
- Abosede, A. J. (2000) Sampling and Sampling Techniques in Research Methods in the Social and Management Science. Centre for Sandwich Programmes (CESAP), Ogun State University, Ago-Iwoye, 175-192.
- Aderamo, A. J. (2003). A Graph Theoretic Analysis of Intra-Urban Road Network in Ilorin, Nigeria. Research for Development. 17, 1 & 2; 18, 1 & 2 (December 2003), 221 – 240.
- Allen, W. and Boyce, D. (1974). Impact of High-speed Transit Facility on Residential Property Values. High Speed Ground Transportation, 8, 2, 53 – 60.
- Alonso, W. (1960): A Model of the Urban Land Market, Paper and Proceedings of the Regional Science Association, 6, 1960, 142-149.
- Alonso, W. (1964). Location and Land Use: Toward a General Theory of Land Rent. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Havard University Press.
- Ambrose, B. (1990). An Analysis of the Factors Affecting Light Industrial Property Valuation. The Journal of Real Estate Research, 5, 355-369.
- American Public Transportation Association (APTA) (2002). Rail Transit and Property Values. Information Centre Briefing Number 1, (January, 2002). http//www.apta.com, accessed December 22, 2007.
- Ary, D., Jacobs, L., and Razavieh, A. (1996). Introduction to Research in Education. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.
- Keener, S., M. Luengo, and S. Banerjee (2010). “Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic, Provision of Water to the Poor in Africa: Experience with Water Standposts and the Informal Water Sector.” Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic background paper, World Bank, Washington, DC.
- Kjellen, M., and G. McGranahan (2006). Informal Water Vendors and the Urban Poor. Human Settlements Discussion Paper Series, Theme Water-3, International Institute for Environment and Development. London: IIED.
