Megacities workshop 4.11

In the megacities workshop, we were given a task concerning a Megacity in Nigeria, called Lagos. About 12 million people live there and there are serious problems with overpopulation. The terms "urban pull" and "rural push" can be easily applied in Lagos. Poor people from rural areas have moved to the overcrowded city in the search of job opportunities and better income. Therefore many of them live in illegal housing settlements. In these slums the living conditions are really poor, there is inadequate/no sanitation or safe drinking water.
I remember the guest lecturer saying that it is a shame that Western countries only pay attention to the problems in Africa, since there are also areas where rich or middle class people are living. I have always had the opinion, that it really defines the progress/development of a country how it treats the people with the lowest income. In my opinion, for example, the United States reallly is not a "developed country", because those with no proper insurance have  no access to health care. There is a certain limit in earnings, after which you can get an insurance, and companies which use cheap labour pay under that limit. This means that some have to work in  two jobs to get access to services.
The situation in Lagos is, that the qovernment has "clean up" operations to get rid of the slums to build more profitable houses. I think this really violates the human rights of poor people.
In our workshop, we were concenrtating on an area in Lagos, which is a slum. Government is going to build new houses for government employees on that site. The poor people have lived there for 22 years and the population on the site is 52,000. Our group (3) was representing community leaders and NGO's. In the beginning, we were talking with social scientist. They thought that we would have to leave the site and begin a new life outside the city. We were thinking that since the people have lived there for 22 year, many of them woudn't want to leave their home. Next we were talking with city planners. They were a bit more optimistic. They thought that we could maybe stay on the site and government could help us to improve living conditions.
The last we were talking with the government. We were thinking in the beginnig that the government would force us to leave the site. But it was totally opposite! They wanted to helpn us to rebuild the site and they said they woudn't build new apartments for government employees at all!
In real life, I think that the government woudn't be that generous and they would just force the inhabitants of the slum to leave.
The exercise was a bit difficult because we didn't have that much of information on the situation. I think it was anyhow very useful to try to solve a real life problem.