On the Materiality of Law: Spatial and Legal Appropriations of the Lagos Set-Back

This paper provides an historical account of the governmental ambitions and unintended side-effects of a specific form of urban regulation in the city of Lagos, Nigeria. A counter-intuitive parable of "corruption", it describes the perversion of this law's original rationale, as it is...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Architectural theory review 2015-05, Vol.20 (2), p.247-265
Main Author: Ross, Liam
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Actor network theory
infrastructure
lagos
law and geography
Materiality
seeing like a city
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Summary:This paper provides an historical account of the governmental ambitions and unintended side-effects of a specific form of urban regulation in the city of Lagos, Nigeria. A counter-intuitive parable of "corruption", it describes the perversion of this law's original rationale, as it is transformed and redirected to serve the declared and undeclared interests of a wide range of urban actors. This account is brought into dialogue with studies in law and geography studies-particularly the concept of "Seeing Like a City"-that suggest we recognise such processes of transformation as politically ambivalent and necessary to the openness and vitality of urban life. Drawing on research methods from the field of Infrastructure Studies, the paper contributes to these literatures by speculating on the particular "actancy" of architecture in the construction and maintenance of this openness.
ISSN:1326-4826
1755-0475
DOI:10.1080/13264826.2016.1170057