Abstract

Residential mobility is the movement of households from one dwelling to another within the same city. It is one of the significant forces underlying changes in urban areas. However, the reason for and the pattern of moves are so complicated both at the micro and macro levels that they make it difficult for one to predict. It is against this background, that the study examines the pattern of residential mobility in Lokoja, Nigeria. Three hundred and fifty-one copies of well-structured questionnaire was administered on household heads who have changed residence. The result shows households that moved once accounted for 52.7% of the sample, 35.0 % moved twice and 12.3% had moved thrice or more. The direction of movement shows more than 1/3 of the movements within the same neighbourhood. Outward movement from the core neighbourhoods of GRA, Adankolo and Lokongoma to the peripheral areas constitutes 42.3%, 37.7%, and 42.0% respectively. In addition, there is a directional bias among the major ethnic groups as most of the mobile households went to the residential areas where their ethnic group predominate. The result of the multi-nominal logistic regression shows that the factor of ethnicity reliably predicted the residential mobility within the area with a P-value of 0.005.  The study recommends for timely and proper planning of fringe areas and renewal programme for the traditional settlement.

Key Words: Pattern, Residential mobility, Neighbourhood, Ethnicity, Geographical impact