By Odum, Chinwuba Onyechi
This study assessed the design adequacy of public sector housing estates developed in Enugu urban between 1999 and 2013. The specific goal was to evaluate the design adequacy of residential buildings in the estates, with the intent of examining the adequacy of housing types with regard to design and environmental attributes; determining the adequacy of functional usable spaces in the buildings against the approved standards, and determining the differences in residents satisfaction levels with regard to their housing types and functional needs. The study adopted the survey design. Consequently, three major instruments, personal observations, questionnaire and semi-structured interview (SSI) were used to generate the required data. The questionnaire was face-validated by three experts: two are lecturers from Department of Architecture of this University and one is an independent statistician. The population of the study consisted of 879 housing units, out of which 648 units (73.72%) were occupied, in the nine housing estates in Enugu. Purposive screening was employed to exclude both the not-purely residential estates and the non-prototype houses built by individuals. In the end, we obtained five purely residential estates and 659 prototype housing units, out of which 478 occupied units (72.53%) were surveyed. Data analysis was done with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), and descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentages, means and standard deviations were used to summarize the data, and answer the research questions. Principal Component Analysis and One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were used to test the hypotheses. The result of the study indicated that the majority (65.8%) of the housing residents belonged to upper middle and higher income classes. The greater majority (80.1%) of the housing types developed within the study period were mainly 4, 5 and 6-bedrooms single family detached duplexes. The analysis for the identifiable pattern in housing types and design as well as environmental attributes in the housing estates was found to be significant. This means that the housing types in the estates actually varied. The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) technique used yielded seven components, and accounted for 91.5% of the variance in the variables. The analysis for the difference between the measured usable designed spaces and the approved standards was also found from the analysis of variance carried out to be significant at 0.036% (less than 0.05). This signifies that the measured spaces were significantly different from the approved standards. This supports result from the study which indicated that the means of the designed functional spaces in the different building types are higher than those of the approved standards. The analysis of variance between housing residents’ satisfaction in terms of their housing types and functional needs was found to be significant at less than 0.01. Therefore, there are identifiable significant differences in residents’ housing satisfaction levels in terms of their housing types and functional needs. Result of the study points up to adequacy of design of the residential buildings in public sector housing estates in Enugu in the study period; but it also suggests that in addition to building designs, considerations for efficient housing development also need to be anchored on required housing types, residents’ needs, as well as overall design and environmental adequacies.