There is a place in Lagos I go to when I need to clear my head. It’s an old jetty in the city’s Ikoyi neighbourhood that sticks out into the still waters of Five Cowrie Creek, which separates Lagos Island from the Lekki Peninsula at its westernmost tip.

At night you can sit and look out at the tall buildings of Victoria Island and the Lagos skyline that, majestic in the dark, belie the fractured sprawl they dominate during the day. Often I lie here with my back on concrete that emanates heat from a day in the sun, staring up at the city lights and dreaming of the paradise that this ever-growing megalopolis will one day become … if only.

This lasts until the private security guards from the mansion behind a large white wall across the street chase me away for “trespassing” on what is clearly public property. I have stopped trying to argue that I have a right to this public space, because it means nothing. In this city, it’s about what you can appropriate, not what you have a right to. If we don’t act, it will increasingly be this way in Lagos and many other cities.

Around the world, our cities are not the idealised open, accessible and cosmopolitan spaces of our dreams. More often than not, they are sectioned and controlled purviews of the radically wealthy, surrounded by clusters of have-nots.

Lagos is no different. Though often described as such by outsiders, it is neither the frenetic emerging market dream, nor a throbbing third-world nightmare. For most people who live here, poor or wealthy, this city is simply a collection of daily rituals of survival, like any other large metropolis.

This, of course, leads to striking juxtapositions of wealth and poverty occupying the same urban space. Such a statement now sounds so cliched as to mean almost nothing – but it’s still one of the prime drivers for the massive United Nations conference, dedicated to reinvigorating “the global commitment to sustainable urbanisation”, which is about to happen in Quito, Ecuador.

UN-orchestrated gatherings are typically the death of all spontaneity and innovation. After reading the 23-page, 175-point New Urban Agenda to be ratified at the UN’s third Habitat conference (which comes along every 20 years), I can confirm that this latest gathering adheres to tradition.

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The traffic in Lagos is notorious – it can take commuters up to four hours to get to work. Photograph: Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images

A document addressing the fact that more than 50% of the world’s population now live in urban centres must certainly be comprehensive, but what practical takeaways are there from a paper with platitudes such as paragraph 27: “We reaffirm our pledge that no one will be left behind, and commit to promote equally shared opportunities and benefits that urbanisation can offer, and enable all inhabitants, whether living in formal or informal settlements, to lead decent, dignified, and rewarding lives and to achieve their full human potential.”

I agree. Who wouldn’t? However, such a proclamation does not lay out a blueprint for housing the homeless child, or for building safe public transport for the 20-something journalist who works at my magazine.

Lagos is a fascinatingly infuriating place that its residents love, and love to hate. Licence plates on cars here proudly display the state motto “Centre of Excellence”, in what often seems a sarcastic swipe at the place we live in. If excellence is an ageing network of broken roads chock-full of luxury cars and overladen lorries constantly harassed by motorbikes and the unruly drivers of Danfo buses, then I suggest we aspire to something else. If the pinnacle of urban living is refuse-clogged open drainage which, when sun warmed, emits the most noxious miasmas that mingle with generator exhaust, then get me to the countryside.

Lagos is sometimes emblematic of disorder. In traffic, drivers make their own rules. There is a constant war between our street hawkers and our various forms of law enforcement deployed to eradicate the “indiscipline” of poverty. The soundtrack of my morning commute is often angry horns and hoarse voices, trading insults across lanes demarcated for two, but occupied by four or more cars.

With such a positive description, you might think people would stay as far away from this city as possible. Yet while some Nigerians do fear, or loathe, Africa’s largest city, Lagos’s population of 21 million people (give or take a couple of million) continues to grow at the rate of 1,200 people per day. On its own, it is the seventh largest economy in Africa, and a locus of ingenuity and creativity with outsized influence on the image of its host country and continent. Its ever-expanding population in tight proximity means opportunity for multinationals and small businesses alike. This means jobs that pay more than merciless subsistence farming in village fields. More jobs mean more growth. More growth means more opportunity, and so the vortex of capitalism pulls people in. Now we all find ourselves desperately searching for a way to make this complicated city more liveable.

If Habitat III serves a purpose, it is first and foremost to remind us that the inexorable process of urbanisation need not be a nightmare. The cynical me sees this gathering as little more than that.

In making broad statements that urban areas are responsible for over 60% of global energy consumption, 70% of greenhouse gas emissions and 70% of global waste, the conference documents largely ignore the fact that not all cities are created equal. They ignore the reality that the bicycle path utopias of western admiration derive from years of extraction, exploitation and environmental abuse both in their geographies and further afield in the former colonial spaces that provided the capital for their reconstruction.

Yes, for those frustrated with the mere mention of colonialism, it matters that the shifting of resources has created unequal pressures and outcomes for our urban environments. It matters that many overstressed cities, such as our beloved Lagos, were originally constructed to support a very small number of non-local people living very, very well.

A catch-all document like the New Urban Agenda feels good in its unifying, cosmopolitan aspirations, but it elides the needs of urban areas in contexts so dissimilar as to almost render its proscriptions purposeless. Among other things, Lagos and many growing African cities face housing, infrastructure and power deficits that people in London, New York and Tokyo cannot imagine.

For example, I remember when New York City experienced total chaos from a three-day blackout due to an electrical grid malfunction in 2003; my uncle and I watched from Lagos wondering what special kind of madness would ensue if we actually had electricity for three days straight. The contexts are not the same.

We must acknowledge there is a fundamental unfairness in suggesting that Addis Ababa, Lagos and Nairobi should not be able to develop the way Amsterdam, London and New York grew, lest we all fall off the climate change cliff.

When I dream about a sustainable future Lagos, I want to see the large landholdings currently occupied by unnecessary military bases turned into massive public parks. I want our lagoon to become a major part of a public transport system that reduces traffic on the road, pressure on the environment, and stress for the millions of people who live here.

I want communities powered by alternative energy, solar panels and tidal turbines so that the city vibrates with the energy of people advancing, not the rumble of large standby generators in the compounds of the wealthy. I want a city in which waste water is treated and used for urban agriculture; where the security walls that currently separate crumble into dust; and where newcomers feel they have moved to new possibility, not just struggle. These are all things that the New Urban Agenda commits to – just without really saying how.

Practically speaking, I know this comes only with greater executive and legislative accountability right here in our “Centre of Excellence” – an unlikely probability during Nigeria’s current season of anomie. Then again, the sheer amount of political will necessary for radical urban transformation doesn’t really exist anywhere in the world. It’s why the fundamental inequalities and problems in cities transform so slowly, and why global conventions are generally ill-suited for the local change-making needed to improve lives.

Instead, a utopian future Lagos must start with a few small steps that are largely applicable to cities like ours around the world.

First and foremost, it’s about fostering the political will to develop means for granting and honouring property rights in places where informality is both a coping mechanism and an Achilles heel for the poor. It’s hard to invest in the upkeep of a place if your claim to the land you live on is tenuous at best. Without the security of property ownership, other areas of life become that much more difficult, and the city suffers.

Second, it’s about innovating in safe, affordable housing made from low-cost but durable building materials. I’m in love with the idea of recycling the massive amounts of plastic waste we produce in Lagos to create lasting building materials and new techniques. It sounds fantastical, but people are already doing it on a small scale.

Finally, it’s about pushing existing financial institutions to develop innovative ways of helping urban dwellers towards property ownership. The mortgages of Lagos need not look like the mortgages of London, but we won’t know what it means unless there is some support for the level of risk involved.

In many ways I’ve bought into the logic of Hernando de Soto Polar; I believe that an almost singular focus on formalising the informal systems that currently underpin the rapid growth of emerging African cities will make it easier to realise the intentions of the New Urban Agenda. If Habitat III can push the world towards that goal, then count me in.

Until then, I’ll keep dreaming in the quiet of Lagos’s private public spaces.

This article originally appeared on The Guardian Cities.

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