Lagos
Today, we're taking a trip to Lagos, Nigeria - home to some 21 million people, it's one of the largest cities in the world. As you'll see in the pictures below - the streets here can get unbelievably crowded, and played a part in the country moving its capital to the more centrally located (and more spacious) city of Abuja in 1991. The city has continued to grow since then however - and has further developed into an important financial center.
While today, Lagos is a city known for its sprawling markets, crowded housing districts and busy streets - there was a time when the city was a little less chaotic. Here in 1910, the city was just beginning to grow - with the first steam tramways crossing the streets.
By the 1960s and 1970s, the city was growing rapidly and quickly became known for its intensely crowded streets - and Nnamdi Azikiwe street in the heart of the city is one the city's busiest. Markets like Idumota Market spill out onto the streets and can make traveling anywhere quite difficult.
Another view of Nnamdi Azikiwe and Idumota Market in the 1980s. While the streets are usually crowded at all times of the day - it gets especially bad during rush hour, and you could be stuck in a traffic jam for hours behind an endless stream of yellow Danfos buses. There's a reason why they call them "go-slows".
We move forward to current times to take a look at one of the city's most iconic landmarks - the Lagos Central Mosque. Opened for worship in 1988, its distinctive Ottoman style minarets can be seen from nearly everywhere in the heart of the city. Close by is another one of the city's most important markets - the sprawling Balogun Market, widely recognized as one of the best places to buy fabrics in the city.
For our next sight, we're making a brief stop on the mainland - where it's a common sight to see wood merchants and sawmills dotting the shorelines. There's a number of bridges crossing the lagoon to get here - with the most stunning being the Third Mainland Bridge, which wraps around the perimeter of the shoreline for nearly 40,000 feet, and is usually filled with the city's iconic buses.
We head back South across Lagos Island to take a look at the city's Central Business District. Many of the country's most important corporations, financial institutions, and major commercial banks are headquartered here, and it serves as a financial center in the region.
For our last scene, we're taking a glimpse into the future to visit the city's Eko Atlantic development, being built on the city's reclaimed Atlantic shoreline on Victoria Island. This new development will house some 250,000 residents and include a variety of commercial and financial developments as well. While the development won't be completed for years to come - it still gives hope that it will transform the city into an even larger financial hub.
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-korver
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Thanks to @scotttbarry, @_Michael, @AsimPika3172, @Handyman, @Krasner, @CorinaMarie, @jakis, @mike_oxlong, @Manuel-ito, @redfox85, @raynev1, @Toby Ferrian, @Angry Mozart, @tariely, @Silur, @pcwhiz24, @bobolee, @matias93, @Odainsaker, @9gruntsand1hammer, @Huggy-Bear, @Androgeos, @Elenphor, @kschmidt, @SC4L0ver, & @RobertLM78 for all the likes on the preview!
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