Artwork title : 2050 Lagos: Amphibious City

By 2032, severe inundation and storm surges resulting from global climate change have forced populations living on Victoria Island and Eko Atlantic to relocate to the land-side of Lagos Lagoon. Along this interior coastline a new Lagoon City was established, providing equitable housing for both displaced and existing populations. At the same time, the Pan-African Union decoupled from the global economy, and in turn, so too did Nigeria’s reliance on the petroleum industry, shifting Lagos’ economy towards sustainable practices of renewable energy and aquaculture.

Despite these events, extreme climate change has resulted in recurring storms that not only threaten Victoria Island but the mainland areas of Lagos as well. As a result, it was decided that following its evacuation, Victoria Island—the former business and wealth hub of Lagos—would be repurposed as an environmental reserve. This newly established Victoria Reserve protects Lagos from storm surges by deconstructing existing buildings and infrastructures in order to rewild the entirety of the Island. While the former petroleum industry and neoliberal urbanization decimated the existing mangroves along the Atlantic coast of Lagos, the new Victoria Reserve creates an opportunity to reestablish the mangroves and their associated habitats.

As a result, Victoria Reserve is now the center of Lagos biodiversity and its most important protection against sea-level rise. Upon establishing the Reserve, the Lagos government also established a network of renewable energy infrastructures off Victoria Reserve’s southern coast. In order to manage these two new environmental infrastructures, the Lagos government has deployed caretakers to reside in select areas of the Victoria Reserve. In addition to this small population of caretakers, some former residents of Victoria Island and Eko Atlantic chose to remain in the Reserve as part of newly formed Freetown communities. However, the majority of the residents of this area chose to migrate to the new Lagoon City in order to be protected from worsening climate events.

With the newly established protection from the Victoria Reserve, the residents of the Lagoon City are able to safely settle and develop truly Amphibious communities. In this way, the Victoria Reserve and Lagoon City have co-evolved to create an entirely new form of mega-city urbanism capable of protecting Lagos from worsening climate challenges while simultaneously expanding the city’s ecological performance.