‘This is Lagos’: George Packer in Nigeria’s Megacity*

By 2015, George Packer reports in an amazing and heartbreaking story about Lagos, Nigeria, in the Nov. 13 issue of the New Yorker, the country’s former capital will rank as the third-largest city in the world, behind Tokyo and Bombay, with 23 million inhabitants. Right now it’s the sixth largest and has 15 million residents, who live mostly in squalor. Packer writes: “It’s hard to decide if the extravagant ugliness of the cityscape is a sign of vigor or of disease—a life force or an impending apocalypse.” As the city struggles to fight off the latter, Packer explores its slums and how Lagos is now “a hip icon of the latest global trends, the much studied megalopolis of the future.” Unfortunately, the story is not available online. However, Packer did recently speak about Lagos on NPR’s Day to Day.

* Update: The story is now online.

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