International Journal of Management and Social Sciences Research (IJMSSR) ISSN: 2319-4421 Volume 2, No. 8, August 2013 i-Xplore International Research Journal Consortium www.irjcjournals.org 189 Affordable Housing Provision in Kano North Western Nigeria: The Imperative for the Creation of Sustainable City Dankani, Ibrahim Mustapha (PhD), Department of Geography, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto ABSTRACT Housing has been the basic need of mankind providing not only shelter but also private and dynamic setting for much social activities and interactions. The problem of housing has become an everyday discussion in all quarters of the public and private sectors of the African countries. It has became glaringly clear that most of the urban population lives in dehumanizing housing environment while those that have access to average housing do so at a very high cost. The expensive nature of housing compels low income and middle income earners to resort to live in dilapidated housing and structures that are often congested and unfit for normal liveability. Provision of housing requires huge capital outlay and the financial requirement on the part of the developers both in the private and public sectors for the provision of housing is to say the least enormous. The major problem confronting planners and urban managers is the emergence of slums and shanty towns which are solely fuelled by the inability of the majority of the populace to afford decent and qualitative housing. This paper examines the causal factors responsible for difficult access to decent and affordable housing in Kano State. Data for the study was collected via administration of questionnaires to residents of three areas mostly affected by poor planning namely, Kurna, Dorayi and Brigade. A total of 126 respondents were selected via systematic sampling technique. The major finding of the study reveals that high cost and difficult access to land, incessant raise in cost of building materials, difficult access to finance and poverty are the major factors that made housing unaffordable to majority of the populace. The study concludes by recommending ways to ensure the provision of affordable housing both by the public and private body so as to serve as an avenue for the creation of sustainable cities in Nigeria. Keywords: Affordable, Housing, Provision, Sustainable-city, Kano INTRODUCTION According to the United Nations and World Health Organization, ‗housing is an enclosed environment in which man finds protection against rain, wind and sunshine‘ (cited in Garba, 2007). Housing is a basic need of mankind providing not only shelter but also private and dynamic setting for much social activities and interactions. The Housing Sector plays a more critical role in a country‘s welfare than is always recognized, as it directly affects not only the well-being of the citizenry, but also the performance of other sectors of the economy. Adequate housing provision has since the early 1970s consequently engaged the attention of most countries, especially the developing ones, for a number of reasons. First, it is one of the three most important basic needs of mankind– the others being food and clothing. Second, housing is a very important durable consumer item, which impacts positively on productivity, as decent housing significantly increases workers‘ health and well being, and consequently, growth. Third, it is one of the indices for measuring the standard of living of people across societies. Consequently, programmes of assistance in the areas of finance, provision of infrastructure and research have been designed by governments to enhance its adequate delivery. For the purpose of this paper it is imperative to stress that housing can be a product and a process and provision of affordable housing must encompasses the two. By housing as a product, it implies not only the structure of the dwelling, but their design and basic built in equipment, amount of space allocation, heating, lightening and sanitary facilities. Housing as a process encompasses more than the dwellings but also neighborhood design, building materials manufacture and distribution, street lightening, housing finance as well as city and regional planning as well as control. The most important thing about housing is not what it is but what it does to people‘s lives. In other words dwellers satisfaction is more important and it does necessarily relate to the imposition of standard. Thus houses are built to satisfy some immediate and subsequent human needs that generally include biological, social, cultural, psychological, political and economic needs. It was widely acknowledged that the housing problem is universal and it is more acute in the developing societies. Towns and cities in Nigeria for instance have been experiencing massive population increase fueled by rural urban migration, thus aggravating the housing problem. This increase compels people to live in dehumanizing housing environment. In most instances, the urban poor live in over-crowded housing, often in self-made temporary structures in slums and squatter settlements where they exert unprecedented pressure on deteriorating urban infrastructure and social services (Diogu, 2002). Nigeria has one of the highest urban growth rates in the world. The proportion of the Nigerian population living in