Urban Sociology of Metropolitan Stormwater Drainage Easement Demarcation Disputes and Informal Settlement Household Relocation Refusal in Lagos Lagoonfront Communities: A Spatial Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Easement Boundaries

The study conceptualises easement demarcation as a socio-legal boundary that produces a discontinuity in tenure security, compensation eligibility and community attachment. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design, the analysis estimates the effect of being located just inside versus just outside the easement boundary on household relocation refusal. The data comprise 58 country-survey observations from the DHS Program indicator on children under five living in households using adequately iodized salt, spanning 31 African countries from 2010 to 2024. The mean outcome is 80.559 (SD = 20.146). Relocation refusal is not primarily a function of compensation adequacy but of the symbolic and social meaning of the easement line, which residents interpret as an arbitrary imposition that disregards local tenure norms and livelihood geographies. The contribution is a sociological reframing of easement disputes as boundary-making conflicts rather than technical drainage problems. The analysis is limited by the absence of household-level data and the use of a proxy indicator; the findings are therefore illustrative of the proposed mechanism rather than definitive.