Africa's Planned Cities Need Unplanning
Nigeria's shantytowns are more functional than its centrally planned gated communities.
Victoria Island, Nigeria—"Sorry, you can't enter. Next time, call our sales office in advance."
That was the greeting my three-man detail and I got after enduring the multihour traffic slog from mainland Lagos to Eko Atlantic. I had never considered that such a high-profile real estate project, launched in 2009, would still be gated to visitors. And when we peered past the guard, it did not seem like much was happening inside. Eko was a smattering of stand-alone high-rises popping up from a barren landscape.
"You'll have to return tomorrow," the guard said.
So we decided that day, and much of the rest of my two weeks in Lagos, to visit the city's many illegal shantytowns instead.
They had a different setup: Anyone can enter, and people were particularly welcoming of me, a rare white visitor. The areas are full of commerce, like linear Walmarts, with anything for sale on a given block. They don't have Eko's media buzz—some even carry stigmas—but they're more functional.
This comparison speaks to a paradox I've found with African real estate. The more "formal" a project is—with master plans, institutional investors, and government involvement—the more slowly it materializes. The more "informal" it is, with minimal rules other than how locals self-govern, the more quickly it becomes a real city.
But maybe that's not odd.
Eko Atlantic had been on my travel bucket list for years. I'm currently on an 18-month trip through the Global South, spending six months apiece in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. One goal is to visit the rising crop of "startup cities" in each region. These are private, for-profit, master-planned projects, often built with government collaboration, that look to compete with and decentralize crowded city cores.
Eko might be the continent's most-discussed startup city, aiming to become "the Dubai of Africa." A partnership between the firm South Energyx Nigeria Limited and the state and federal governments, it is a massive land reclamation project. They're using dredged-up fill to build what will be a four-square-mile city, buttressed with a sea wall to prevent flooding in Lagos.
The plan is to create a gated city and financial and lifestyle hub for international elites. It will have stable laws, a "free zone" status full of tax and regulatory benefits, a canal system with water taxis (again, think Dubai), and a somewhat hands-off land use regime, reflected by those few early skyscrapers.
Already, condos start at $700,000 and rise to seven figures. The trend should continue upward once the new $537 million U.S. consulate building, the largest of its kind in Africa, is occupied. Eko has received gushing media coverage and Clinton Global Initiative sponsorship. The long-term goal is to house 250,000, a population density mirroring Manhattan.
Yet 14 years in, Eko is a ghost town.
The Africa-based YouTuber Steven Ndukwu has some theories about why it remains empty, including weak currency and the low wages of average Nigerians relative to the high land prices in Eko. Development director Pierre Edde, who we were able to meet on our second visit, made similar excuses. Nigeria suffered, he said, through eight years of dismal economic performance under former President Muhammadu Buhari, causing sharp average income declines even before COVID-19.
But the most important reason seems self-evident: Eko built a wall isolating itself from the rest of Lagos. It's no more accessible to women outside selling water from buckets on their heads than it was to me, an accredited investor who still could not enter after explaining my mission to the gatekeeper.
Lagos' slums, by contrast, thrive, despite dealing with the same macroeconomic conditions as Eko. After interviewing Edde, we visited Makoko, a fishing village that actually does have a population of 250,000. Dubbed "the world's largest floating slum," it was settled illegally in the 1800s by Egun tribesmen and remains a makeshift port. Some residents live on land, but many live out in the water on stilted housing, navigating through a system of private canoe taxis.
Makoko's economy features a mix of lumber trading with villages up the lagoon and fishing on small wooden motorboats. Fish are smoked in residents' kitchens, leaving a cloud over the neighborhood, and transported to markets across Lagos.
Makoko does not have a public government, but chiefs there provide schools, security, and well water and manage neighborhood planning. (The place's only apparent interaction with outside governments is when it's constantly threatened with seizure and demolition.)
When touring the waterways with one chief, a 24-year-old school administrator named Wheduto Urban January, I found supermarkets, barber shops, and restaurants. Once we returned to land, there were even more options, with a large business ecosystem weaving through the alleyways.
Such ingenuity is common in other slums. Days later we visited Agege on the northwest side. It too is packed with markets, including one that, due to lack of space elsewhere, has grown organically along the train tracks. The area has become known as a place to buy furniture, with patrons hopping off the line and back on with their new cabinets and beds. When a new train arrives, every few hours, merchants move their belongings to let it pass. They reoccupy the tracks afterward.
My intent here is not to down-talk Eko Atlantic, or to paint too rosy a picture of Lagos' unsanitary slums. But there are lessons they can learn from each other.
Startup cities are important in the "competitive governance" trend, showing how liberalized special jurisdiction status can disrupt old city-management models. But a mix of government and corporate processes means heavy bureaucracy, sterile planning, and slow growth. Slums have the opposite problem. The lack of clear laws and titles discourages large-scale investment. Weak public governance causes collective action problems, from sewage overflow to gang violence.
But slums also have a low barrier to entry that attracts thousands of sole proprietors into unregulated (illegal) spaces. From there the neighborhoods grow organically. They have been described as "spontaneous order," "planned chaos," "emergent urbanism," "fine-grained urbanism," and "incrementalism." With time, they become complex economies that foster upward mobility, a Jane Jacobs dream.
Many of Africa's planned developments, from public housing projects to private "startup" ones, neglect this opening stage. In wanting to appeal to investors, upscale clients, famous consultants, and the political class, they aim for a finished development state.
The best way Eko could jump-start itself is by leaning into Nigeria's core advantage: the tremendous entrepreneurial energy that exists on every street corner, including the ones right outside its gate. "Phase 1" need not mean (as it often does in these megaprojects) sitting on fallow land for decades waiting for large developers. It could mean activating the land early with short-term leases to food cart operators who serve lunch to construction workers. Eko could at the same time offer such solopreneurs better security.
There's nothing like that currently in Eko. Instead, it's courting high-end clients who have many options and may never think to live in Nigeria. If the urbanism strategy of this and similar projects doesn't change, I might return in another 14 years and find the same Potemkin villages.
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SCOTT BEYER owns Market Urbanism Report. He is traveling the U.S. for a book on revitalizing cities.
Why? What is the point of cities in a post-industrial society? Why would you want to re-vitalize them? Let ’em decay and fall apart.
I’m making $90 an hour working from home. I never imagined that it was honest to goodness yet my closest companion is earning 16,000 US dollars a month by working on the connection, that was truly astounding for me, she prescribed for me to attempt it simply. Everybody must try this job now by just using this website… http://www.Payathome7.com
Because blue values are not wanted in smaller towns and cities (less than 100k people). And like most of the writers on the payroll, they cannot live without them.
What is the point of cities in a post-industrial society?
Control. As the story illustrates, it’s difficult dictate people’s lives to them if they’re out in the wild. That’s why urbanization is a core goal of globalism.
“Control… it’s difficult dictate people’s lives to them if they’re out in the wild”
It’s control over land and resources in the hinterland that’s at issue. The unwanted rural population is left to fend for themselves as they migrate to the slums. It’s easier than you think. It’s happening all over the world.
“What is the point of cities in a post-industrial society? ”
Nigeria isn’t a post industrial society. They are promoting the offshoring of light industry just like China and India did before them. The post industrial societies are those who’ve offshored their industries to other countries.
I somehow doubt MudflatSteading will be the Next Big Thing .
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Nigeria is home to the Igbo people, popularly known as the “Jews of Africa”, not only because of their financial acumen but because of their high genetic intelligence. Higher than many European and some Asian ethnic groups.
Igbo slaves weren’t popular in the Triangle Trade. Those that were sold weren’t victims of slave-raiding wars or expeditions but debtors or criminals. With the goal for freedom, enslaved Igbo were known to planters as being rebellious and having a high rate of suicide to escape slavery.
In the sixties the Igbo took their oil-rich lands and tried to separate from the rest of Nigeria forming the country of Biafra, although that didn’t succeed thanks to the ensuing civil war.
Nigeria’s Yoruba are intellectually no slouches either. Most Nigerian immigrants to the West are from those two groups, and they’re usually well-educated and highly motivated.
That’s why Nigeria is highly contrasted compared to many other African countries. Full of poor, backwards communities in some places while others are richer and more sophisticated than many areas in the US.
There’s much to be said of Nigeria, but it’s Ghana, number two after Nigeria in West Africa, that has captured the attention of thousands of African Americans. Migration to Ghana goes back to W.E.B du Bois. In 2019 the Ghana government celebrated the ‘year of return’ calling on black Americans to pull up stakes and relocate.
Funny story: Whether in jest, or in sincerity, his Russian hosts called him Colonel du Bois, when he visited the USSR. His passport listed his name as W.E.B. du Bois (col.).
Add Nigeria to the list of nations that rejoice in remaining unvisited by Mothers Lament
What the hell are you babbling about now, Shrike? I spent a month in Lagos and two weeks in Abuja, but regardless that’s irrelevant to what I wrote.
Your remarks on Nigerian ethnic groups would do credit to Archie Bunker.
As the saying goes,
Beware and take care of the Bight of Benin
For one that comes out, there’s twenty goes in.
What the fuck does praising the Igbo and Yoruba have to do with Archie Bunker and malaria, Buttplug? You’re not even trying with your trolls anymore.
Who in Chukwu’s name are you praising for doing what to whom in Biafra?
Though fueled by Niger delta oil that war began with Hausa and Yoruba on Ibo and Efikbo ethnic violence all the way from Sokoto to Cameroon
I see you’ve quickly Googled something you don’t understand and have written it down in the form of a nonsense sentence that’s pretty much incoherent.
See, this is what I mean about being a lazy troll.
Public Imbecile shows up from time to time to make sure everyone knows s/he IS and imbecile.
There have been a slew of articles the last couple of weeks about Silicon Valley billionaires buying up land in Solano County, northeast of the San Francisco Bay, with the intention of creating an ideal enclave. This Fortune article is more even handed than a lot of the articles, which tend to paint their land buys as secretive and sinister:
https://fortune.com/2023/08/30/san-francisco-new-city-history-wealthy-americans-company-town/
Because they probably are secretive and sinister, oh mighty sea lion.
“But slums also have a low barrier to entry that attracts thousands of sole proprietors into unregulated (illegal) spaces. ”
This doesn’t ring true. Only a few would move to these urban slums because they find them attractive. For the most part the move to the slums is motivated because life in their traditional homes, typically in rural areas, has become unlivable, and the slums are the choice of last resort.
Cite?
I have no cite. I believe that those rural dwellers who migrate to slums do so out of desperation rather than being drawn to the attractions of slum dwelling.
Fuck off and die, asshole:
mtrueman|8.30.17 @ 1:42PM|#
“Spouting nonsense is an end in itself.”
That was my intuition on that line as well, I must admit
Perhaps you should have stated it as opinion rather than as fact – just as the author should have his[sans anything to back it up]
It seems like there’s got to be some room between $7 slum houses and $700k condos for innovation.
The missing middle?
Thing is, Nigerians are quite poor, so they can’t afford to live in middle-class housing. The super expensive houses are intended for rich immigrants. Middle-class people can’t afford (and probably don’t want) to move to Nigeria.
But did you meet any Nigerian princes?
Those princes are now broke after they gave all their money away on the internet.
BTW, the photos of Nigerian track-side markets look a little bit neater than tracks in Los Angeles, where last year “free-lance” decriminalized entrepreneurs were ransacking cargo trains for trade goods.
Seems the Nigerians understand the proper flow of goods on the tracks.
Wow, they must really hate Biden in Canada because of skyrocketing home values:
Consider someone purchasing their first home in Vancouver. The average cost for a condo last month was $814,000. Cutting that by 20 per cent would bring it in line with prices in early 2021. Was the market affordable then?
.
Or consider a prospective lower-income renter in Toronto. Scanning the offerings turns up one that might once have served such a person. It has a good location but is in a basement, measures just 450 square feet and, at least according to the photos in the listing, admits natural light only through the door. It costs $1,900 per month.
Up three times faster than the US.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-canadas-costly-housing-market-needs-a-reality-check/
Were Canadians consulted in the poll that found “When asked whether Biden or Trump has done ‘a better job handling the economy,’ 54 percent said Trump and just 36 percent said Biden”?
#DefendBidenAtAllCosts
To what extent was the typical Canadian harmed by the fact that 2022 was “Wall Street’s worst year since 2008”?
#DefendBidenAtAllCosts
Buttplug somehow thinks that Soros pal and WEF baby, Justin Trudeau, didn’t do to Canada what Biden is doing to the US.
What’s happening in Canada right now is the direct results of all your favorite globalist policies, Shrike.
Yeah we know – according to MAGA conservatives when demand increases prices it means the economy sucks.
High demand + full employment = shitty economy.
MAGA nuts actually believe that.
“MAGA” represents nowhere near 50% of the country, genius. Biden’s economic approval sucks because millions of people who dislike Trump personally can nevertheless admit they’re financially worse off since Biden took over.
Just as people who dislike Trump can admit Putin is behaving worse since Joe “Seriously Guys, Putin Is Totally Scared of Me” Biden became Commander in Chief.
But when you’re a partisan hack Democrat, this level of nuance is beyond you. *shrug*
WE NEED A WHITE REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT!
SAMS CLUB CLOSING STORES IN 2018 MEANT THE ECONOMY WAS IN RUINS BUT 2022 BEING THE WORST WALL STREET YEAR SINCE 2008 DOESNT MATTER BECAUSE BIDEN IS A DEMOCRAT
Walmart stock cruises into Labor Day weekend near all-time high
.
On Thursday, Walmart stock (WMT) reached a record closing high of $162.61 per share. The stock started September near its all-time high but closed slightly off the record price at $161.56 on Friday.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/walmart-stock-cruises-into-labor-day-weekend-near-all-time-high-200657489.html
“BUT WALMART’S UP!!!”
Are you going to boast about the skyrocketing numbers of thrift shops, dollar stores and food banks, next?
Open Society really needs to hire less retarded shills.
They aren’t sending their best.
But what do you expect from Soros boot lickers.
turd lies. turd lies when he knows he’s lying. turd lies when we know he’s lying. turd lies when he knows that we know he’s lying.
turd lies. turd is a TDS-addled lying pile of lefty shit and a pederast besides.
Oh yeah, if you’re not a partisan hack you can admit Biden is a miserable failure on covid by his own standards and should be thrown out of office even if everything else was fine.
220,000 deaths. If you hear nothing else I say tonight, hear this: Anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain President of the United States.
Again Sandy, I remind you that I have repeatedly called for Old Joe to immediately withdraw from the 2024 presidential election.
But if he doesn’t withdraw and is still breathing I will vote for him over the criminal Fatass Donnie.
How bipartisan of you.
turd lies when he knows he’s lying. turd lies when we know he’s lying. turd lies when he knows that we know he’s lying.
turd lies. turd is a lying pile of lefty shit and a pederast besides.
turd lies when he knows he’s lying. turd lies when we know he’s lying. turd lies when he knows that we know he’s lying.
turd lies. turd is a TDS-addled lying pile of lefty shit and a pederast besides.
hmmm what could make 33% of people say anything good about Biden…
Around a third of registered voters in the U.S. (34%) identify as independents, while 33% identify as Democrats and 29% identify as Republicans, according to a Center analysis of Americans’ partisan identification based on surveys of more than 12,000 registered voters in 2018 and 2019.
I guess we can tell how many hard core Dem voters are disguising themselves with an independent voter skinsuit now.
The answer is – a Dem voter will vote Dem and answer any partisan question in favor of Dems 100% of the time [I don’t see a problem with that – if you cant stand the values of the ther party].
Looks like at least 3% of people claiming to be independents are hardcore Ds
Have those people considered MAID?
Sad news:
Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, known as ‘Joe the Plumber,’ dies at 49
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/28/politics/samuel-wurzelbacher-joe-the-plumber-dies/index.html
Joe was the wingnut who said everything would be alright if we just had a white Republican president.
Where did Joe Wurzelbacher say “everything would be alright if we just had a white Republican president.”?
You can’t stop raging and lying about people who challenged powerful Democrats, but somehow you want us to believe that you’re not a party shill… But anyway, go celebrate your political enemy’s death. Don’t let me stop you.
Besides being completely and utterly full of shit, you were also banned for posting links to child pornography.
turd, the ass-clown of the commentariat, lies; it’s all he ever does. turd is a kiddie diddler, and a pathological liar, entirely too stupid to remember which lies he posted even minutes ago, and also too stupid to understand we all know he’s a liar.
If anything he posts isn’t a lie, it’s totally accidental.
turd lies; it’s what he does. turd is a lying pile of lefty shit.
Greatest Floridian dies:
Florida owes you one, Jimmy Buffett. Hope you find that lost shaker of salt | Opinion
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/article278894344.html#storylink=cpy
turd, the ass-clown of the commentariat, lies; it’s all he ever does. turd is a kiddie diddler, and a pathological liar, entirely too stupid to remember which lies he posted even minutes ago, and also too stupid to understand we all know he’s a liar.
If anything he posts isn’t a lie, it’s totally accidental.
turd lies; it’s what he does. turd is a TDS-addled lying pile of lefty shit.
House Oversight Democrats ask GOP to subpoena Affinity Partners, Jared Kushner’s $3 billion Saudi-backed private equity fund
https://www.businessinsider.com/raskin-kushner-saudi-comer-oversight-subpoena-fund-affinity-partners-trump-2023-8
WE DEMAND TO SEE THARE BANK RECORDS!
According to reporting by the Intercept, MBS once boasted that Kushner was “in his pocket.”
.
While serving in government, Kushner delivered big for Saudi Arabia. He pushed for Trump to make the kingdom his first overseas trip. The New York Times reported that Kushner personally intervened to get MBS a better price from Lockheed Martin on a $110 billion arms deal.
Trump Crime Family shenanigans.
Sounds like a Russia disinformation plot.
What crime?
Did they get caught peddling influence while actually in the White House?
Maybe explain to me how doing a job that you previously had, investing money for other people, three years after leaving the administration, is illegal?
With Hunter and Joe it’s pretty clear what the crime is, and it’s something that’s always been a crime. With Kushner you weasels are having to claim that something which was always legal and ethical is now somehow magically not.
This is exactly the same as arresting someone for filling out the correct line on a income statement, keeping their old papers they were legally allowed to and complaining about fraud in the courts using precedents established in the 1870s, 1960, and 2000.
Without any hyperbole it is fascism, and if you even had the barest whiff of liberalism about you you would oppose it with every fiber of your being. But you won’t, because you’re a Nazi.
turd lies. turd lies when he knows he’s lying. turd lies when we know he’s lying. turd lies when he knows that we know he’s lying.
turd lies. turd is a lying pile of lefty shit and a pederast besides.
Don’t forget that the ass-clown of the commentariat, lies; it’s all he ever does. turd is a kiddie diddler, and a pathological liar, entirely too stupid to remember which lies he posted even minutes ago, and also too stupid to understand we all know he’s a liar.
If anything he posts isn’t a lie, it’s totally accidental. turd lies; it’s what he does. turd is a lying pile of lefty shit. rget that
Remember when Jeffery Epstein didn’t kill himself? Yeah me neither.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-ramaswamy-vows-publish-epstein-client-list
“I think what we have a lot in this country are a lot of conspiracy realists. And so, I’m one of them just because everything you sort of suspect oftentimes becomes true,” Ramaswamy noted in response to a question from a voter who urged that she is “tired of being called a conspiracy theorist.”
“We will publish the Jeffrey Epstein client list… Roll the log over, let’s see what crawls out,” he added.
“At least publish it, we’ve got to see it. Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” Ramaswamy continued, adding “And I trust the people of this country to say it is not just what is easy but what is hard, we will confront the truth.”
Conspiracy realist huh. OK I’m stealing that.
Vivek Ramaswamy didn’t kill himself. You heard it here first, folks.
Chris Williamson has a really interesting interview with Eric Weinstein about when he met Jeffrey Epstein.
Weinstein thinks Epstein was a construct played by a real person, sort of like Mossad agent Eli Cohen in Syria in the sixties. He was supposed to be this genius financier but nobody is on record as having done business with him and nobody can find records of his trades. Weinstein thinks he existed to help trap and extort powerful people and force them on side.
Thanks for the link. Now that I’m a conspiracy realist I can say that the theory Weinstein posits is the only one that actually makes sense and a version of it has been rolling around in my brain, and probably a lot of other brains, for quite a few years. Nobody can explain who Epstein was. Nobody can explain where the money came from. He obviously served a purpose in controlling powerful people but no one can explain how he personally benefited. And no one in a position to know will reveal the facts even though the extent of the cover up is obvious. I think calling Epstein a construct explains a lot.
Oddly not a single ICE vehicle burst into flames.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/hurricane-idalia-aftermath-saltwater-exposure-causes-thermal-runway-flooded-electric
Nigeria’s shantytowns are more functional than its centrally planned gated communities.
I haven’t read the article yet, I’m just sort of passing by, but this statement alone seems to do the concept a disservice. Let’s pretend for a moment that the shanty towns, based on a set of metrics are more “functional” than the planned, gated communities. Which would one rather live in?
For instance, I don’t know where Scott Beyer lives, but I live in a city that is literally covered in shanty towns, and they’re dystopian nightmares. And I’ll bet that you could point to the “spontaneous order” aspects of them and declare “look how well things run based on this stateless, agreed-upon organization!”
As Thomas Sowell said, “there are only tradeoffs”. I’m the last person to vociferously stand up in defense of Urban Planning, so I guess I’d like to see comparisons between unplanned communities with a lot of dynamism and successful wealth creation with minimal central planning instead. You know, a place where people have clean water, electricity and a roof that won’t collapse in an earthquake.
If you had read the article before writing three paragraphs, you’d know there is nothing there in the planned community. That makes it pretty clear which is better:
“And when we peered past the guard, it did not seem like much was happening inside. Eko was a smattering of stand-alone high-rises popping up from a barren landscape.”
This is after 14 years of “development”.
Caw caw!
Caw caw caw
Caw caw caw
Caw caw caw
Caw caw caw
Caw caw caw
Life is indeed tradeoffs, but for the wise, they should be trade-ups.
Perhaps a better example of Spontaneous Order would be Shantytowns with community members trained in construction, First Aid, EMT, Lifeguarding/Lifesaving, boat and automotive repair/rescue/salvage, and equipped with fire extinguishers, jaws-of-life, water filters/water makers, water cisterns, garbage service, compost piles, earthworm farms, raised bed gardens, chicken coops, small arms, etc.
In other words, a self-sufficient plus trading with outsiders community that can hold it’s own without the massive inputs of public-private vanity projects.
Big projects are the plague of Africa. I’m sure they date to colonial era. But also include foreign aid, Western NGO’s, foreign investment and most of the cash crop stuff, World Bank, etc.
All of them eliminate the ability of locals to make decisions. And create a class of very powerful Western dependent elites who become corrupt.
Who’s socking as Jfree?
“create a class of very powerful Western dependent elites who become corrupt.”
This sounds like anti-JFree.
Can’t have a story about Shantytowns without the Aspirational Anthem by Jonathan Edwards:
Jonathan Edwards – Shanty – (Jonathan Edwards, November 1971)
https://youtu.be/vH5qJNl8qDM?si=jwObYxvsr9bXD6HK
If every day in the Shantytowns were like this song, then you’d really have something damn good!
🙂
😉
—-The trend should continue upward once the new $537 million U.S. consulate building, the largest of its kind in Africa, is occupied.——
Half a billion, eh? Lemme guess: The Big Guy sent Hunter over a bit before the deal got done. Uncle Joey can use another beachfront to ride his bike in secret and as refuge to babysit the grandkid who ain’t.
I’ll wager either the commies or greenies have their DNA all over this Potemkin dump. It smells like grift.
I did a little tracing of who approved this expenditure. And it turns out it is part of a grandiose embassy-building scheme that started in … 1999, in response to 1998 terrorist bombings. And they say Congress can’t think long term!
By the way that was during the Clinton Administration, when we had a Democratic president and a Republican House.
Here’s a GAO report on the program, which is scheduled out to 2018:
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-18-653#:~:text=In%201999%2C%20State%20launched%20the,design%20for%20all%20new%20embassies.
[Disclaimer: May seem like I am defending the Bidens, but this comment is offered (a) in the spirt of “both sides” (I didn’t know what rabbit hole I might go down when looking for the roots of this outrageous expenditure approval), and (b) countering the laziness of assuming the Bidens had anything to do with this one. It’s a fair cop to say Biden should be reining in this project, but that can also be said of the Clinton, Bush II, Obama, and Trump administrations.]
> Lagos’ slums, by contrast, thrive, despite dealing with the same macroeconomic conditions as Eko.
And they boast a lower murder rate than Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Detroit, NOLA, and DC!
Good for them!
Well obviously, Chicago and Baltimore and DC need more common sense gun control laws.
Nah, let’s just blame Ohio. It’s easier.
And the roadz in Somalia are no doubt more efficient, popping up where they are needed, instead of where the warlords plan them.
It too is packed with markets, including one that, due to lack of space elsewhere, has grown organically along the train tracks. The area has become known as a place to buy furniture, with patrons hopping off the line and back on with their new cabinets and beds. When a new train arrives, every few hours, merchants move their belongings to let it pass. They reoccupy the tracks afterward.
Huh, a
libertarianmagazine hedging in favor of a Negative Railroad. Imagine that.