The Beautification Project focuses on the cosmetic greening of Lagos, a city shaped by infrastructure, traffic pressure, and inequality. On roundabouts, in central reservations, and on leftover plots along the road, small parks, ornamental planting, and decorative green zones appear, suggesting calm, order, and representation. Yet these interventions scarcely function as public space.
In many cases, the parks are fenced off, difficult to access, or entirely closed, and are often guarded by an armed watchman. What is presented as greening therefore proves not to be intended as a place for staying or leisure, but as a visual correction of the city. At the same time, this policy also had another, more everyday effect. Small plant kiosks began to appear more and more frequently in the streetscape, as the growing demand for greenery also generated new forms of informal entrepreneurship. In this series, beautification thus emerges not only as a form of urban staging in which green is used to mask unrest, pressure, and inequality, but also as a development that was appropriated by residents in practical and economic ways.