In 2000, the United Nations established the Millennium Development
Goals. One of them is to improve the lives of a hundred million slum
dwellers by 2020, in terms of shelter, water, sewers, jobs, and
governance. This will require enormous expenditures of money and effort,
but even if the goal is achieved nearly a quarter of the world’s
population — more than two billion people— will still be living in
conditions like those in Lagos.

To some Western intellectuals, Lagos has become the archetype of the
megácity—perhaps because its growth has been so explosive, and perhaps
because its city- scape has become so apocalyptic. It has attracted the
attention of leading writers and artists, who have mounted international
exhibitions in London and Berlin. All this interest has somehow
transformed Lagos into a hip icon of the latest global trends, the much
studied megalopolis of the future, like London and Paris in the
nineteenth century or New York and Tokyo in the twentieth. For several
years, the Dutch architect and urban theorist Rem Koolhaas has been
working with his students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design on a
project to study the future of cities; he has gone to Lagos four times
and produced several articles as well as a book to be published early
next year, "Lagos: How It Works." Koolhaas once described Lagos to an
interviewer as a protean organism that creatively defies constrictive
Western ideas of urban order. ‘What is now fascinating is how, with some
level of self-organization, there is a strange combination of extreme
underdevelopment and development," he said.

cont'd....
http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/cover/november06/22112006/f422112006.html