Community participation as a premise for hangwurian city development in North Central Nigeria

Abstract

The Hangwurian City Development Model evolved to create a linkage within the concepts of environmental awareness, urban governance, and management. Others are sustainable urban development, urban liveability, and inclusive physical development. These were measured from various indicators ranging from population, environmental knowledge, economic prosperity, quality of life, and safety. The research sorts the critical objective of analysing the significant level of the indicator variables’; and determine the predictive relevance of the indicator variables. The exploratory research employed the partial least square using SmartPLS to evaluate the variables, collecting quantitative data through the open data tool kit from three selected cities of Lokoja, Minna, and Lafia in North-Central Nigeria. The research sampled 399 respondents across the cities randomly selected amongst residents aged 18 years and more reliably targeted household heads as the unit of measurement is the household. The research findings show that most of the examined variables have Cronbach’s Alpha above 0.7, and most of the retained variables have a significant value of greater or equal to 0.7. The average variance of the indicators where very substantial as most were within the 0.5 to 0.6 band. Most of the evaluated indicators have a significant performance index of between 50 and 65 %. The research recommended that this model be applied as a procedural model to guide city development at a regional scale. Hence, it was concluded that for city development to occur and evolve without ills which Hangwurian city development stands for, it must be viewed from the path linkage and significance of environment, governance, sustainability, liveability, and inclusion.