Leveraging Smart Urban Planning for Climate-Resilient and Affordable Housing in Rapidly Growing Cities: A Policy Framework for Abuja, Nigeria

Rapid urban growth increasingly forces low- and middle-income households into hazard-exposed locations or unaffordable formal markets, making “resilience” and “affordability” inseparable planning problems. This paper examines how smart urban planning—understood as data enabled, risk-informed, and institutionally coordinated spatial governance—can support climate-resilient and affordable housing delivery in fast-growing cities, using Abuja, Nigeria, as an illustrative policy case. A structured narrative review and targeted policy–legal analysis synthesise evidence across climate adaptation, housing affordability, land governance, and smart-city data governance, focusing on mechanisms rather than technology adoption alone. The synthesis shows four recurring constraints: (1) weak enforcement of risk-sensitive land-use controls, (2) land and infrastructure sequencing failures that inflate serviced-land scarcity, (3) fragmented data ecosystems that exclude informal residents and undermine trust, and (4) affordability programmes that neglect land value dynamics and tenure security. The paper’s main contribution is a practical framework that couples climate-risk mapping with inclusion safeguards, serviced-land pipelines, and equity-sensitive land value tools (including land readjustment) to expand safe, serviced, and affordable housing options. Policy implications emphasise that smart planning must be judged by distributive outcomes—who gains safe access to land and services—rather than by digitisation metrics.