ESTATE SERVICE AND ITS EFFECT ON RENTAL VALUE

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Access to major roads provides relative advantages consequent upon which commercial users locate to enjoy the advantages. Modern businesses, industries, trades and general activities depend on transport and transport infrastructure, with movement of goods and services from place to place becoming vital and inseparable aspects of global and urban economic survival. Developments of various transportation modes have become pivotal to physical and economic developments. Such modes include human porterage, railways, ropeways and cableways, pipelines, inland waterways, sea, air, and roads (Said and Shah, 2008).

According to Oyesiku (2002), urbanization in Nigeria has a long history in its growth and development. Extensive development being a feature of the 19th and 20th centuries, with concentration of economic and administrative decision-making in Lagos, Ibadan, Kaduna, Jos, and Enugu, and high degree of specialization and larger population associated with greater specialization of goods and services. Wyatt (1997) states that urban areas have tendency to develop at nodal points in transport network and places with good road network will possess relative advantage over locations having poor network. Urban locations with such relative advantage are found where different transport routes converge with high degree of compactness, connectivity, density, length and accessibility exhibited within the intra- and inter- urban road networks.

1.2 Statement of the Research Problem

The relationship between transportation and urban property values has been the focus of many studies (for example, Dewees, 1976; Damm et al, 1980; Wolf, 1992; Singh, 2005). Some of the earlier studies returned positive relationship between transport and property values while others showed negative relationship. For instance