The Housing Crisis: When We Outsource Our Cities To The Market, And Then Complain They Do Not Work For Us. In 2025, Nigeria's real estate sector's nominal growth reached 89% in Q3. Making it a major economic pillar, contributing over 13% to the total GDP… While the housing crisis worsens. Well, the market doesn’t care if your city works. TLDR: Our city development is largely dictated by IGR, and revenue targets. Governments watch the market, collect taxes from real estate + construction, and call it “growth”... Meanwhile, unlike the city, “the market doesn't have a soul”. It doesn't care about feelings or what people lack, it only responds to how cash moves. So when governments ignore demand-side planning and infrastructure (roads, power, water, transit, access to jobs) doesn’t work. And developers self-fund infrastructure, making amenities cash-n-carry… Yet, IGR increases & GDP grows. While cities keep failing. Housing shortage averages 27 million. Infrastructure deficit in excess of a trillion dollars. And quality of life keeps getting worse. But the problem isn’t the market. The problem is that we let it, alone, decide how our cities grow. So, for our cities to work, government must listen to the demand side, It must first create a structure for city planning/development to respond to people’s needs… And only then allow the market to operate within that structure. Not the other way around.