Planning Green Infrastructure: Provisions and Alteration in Prominent Cities of Nigeria

Abstract: Green infrastructure provides physical aesthetics, healthier and quality environment for urban settlements globe. However, many urban centres in the third world countries are deprived the benefits of green infrastructure and subjected to unhealthy conditions that endanger human safety, land uses and the entire ecological system of both macro and micro environment due to poor planning and government policies. This research therefore, compared the effect of green infrastructure alteration on the physical environment of two major cities (Port Harcourt and Calabar) Nigeria. The study sampled 6 green zones and 250 residents for both cities under investigation while Duncan Multiple Comparism analysis (DMCA), mathematical percentage (MP) and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was adopted as the statistical analysis implements. The findings established that calabar benefits from green infrastructure that improves the city aesthetics and other aspect of the environment through proper physical planning and government policies than Port Harcourt city of Nigeria at (P<0.05). In furtherance, the study revealed that usage understanding, budget constraint, wrong cost benefit analysis, and poor environmental management and maintenance strategies were identified as the key determinants of naturally retained and planned green infrastructure alteration in both cities, and discovered that, the city of Calabar was built on smart and resilient development strategies than Port Harcourt metropolis of Nigeria.  The study recommended that town planning authorities should be charge with the responsibilities of smart and resilient city building through green infrastructure development and avoidance of informal alteration of such infrastructure. Also, suggested the need for frequent acquisition of data on green infrastructure development and inclusion in all land use development.