CONCEPTUALIZATION OF URBANIZATION STRUCTURE AND CLIMATE CHANGE IN LAGOS, NIGERIA

Urbanization is synonymous with environmental challenges. fn developing countries, the challenges have assumed higher dimension sproportionally due to multifarious issues of rapid changes in the environment,due to development, through population growth and industrialization, and accompanied by all kinds of pollution such as air pollution, waste disposal, land use degradation, and vehicular pollution as the resultant effects of man\u27s interaction with the environment. The main characteristic effect is the raised temperature of the city centre (UHf) leading to excessive energy usefor cooling and putting urban population at great morbidity and mortality risks. This paper literally explores the conceptualframework of interaction between urbanization structure and understanding social impacts of climate change and variabilityfor the evaluation of strategies in the urbanized environment that might serve as adaptive response to climate change. The urbanizationstructure that affects Lagos state is discussed in relation to the location of the city, the size, thepopulation density, urban geometry, thermalproperty, air pollution, land usepattern, wind speed and anthropogenic activities. The study revealed that climate change is posing increasing challengesfor cities placing greater stress and impacts on multiple social and biophysical systems, including urban infrastructure, water and energy demand simultaneously,followed by a strong global trend towards urbanization of urbanpoverty. The study concluded that climate change has impacted greatly on virtually all the socio-economic aspects of man