Spatial Pattern of Housing Quality in Abuja, Nigeria (Published)
The study attempted evaluation of Spatial Pattern of Housing Quality of Abuja, Nigeria. The identified 62 political wards were stratified into their various Area Councils namely, Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC), Bwari Area Council, Gwagwalada Area Council, KwaliArea Council, Kuje Area Council and Abaji Area Council. Using systematic random sampling, 3593, 1002,641,290,341 and 202 houses were selected in AMAC, Bwari Area Council, Gwagwalada Area Council, Kwali Area Council, Kuje Area Council and Abaji Area Council respectively to give a total of 6069 houses. Socioeconomic characteristics of the households revealed that the youth constituted 14.2% of the respondents, while 79.99% of the respondents were also found to be in the age bracket of 31-60 years. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) confirmed, that there were significant differences in the age distribution of the residents (F = 4.11, p = 0.005). Analysis of spatial pattern of housing quality using Factor Analysis revealed that housing location quality attributes factor, recorded highest influence on the spatial pattern of housing quality in Area Councils, such as AMAC, Bwari Area Council and Gwagwalada Area Council. The study concluded that a general hierarchical trend in spatial pattern of housing quality had been figured out in Abuja, where housing quality was observed to decrease with increase in distance from the Central Business District(CBD).
Keywords: Abuja, Housing Quality, central business district, urban spatial structure