Lekki

Lekki is where Lagos decided that it was going to grow rather than simply accumulate. The older parts of the city have run out of room in the ways that cities with finite geography eventually do. Lekki is the answer to that problem: a long peninsula stretching east along the Atlantic coast, wide enough to contain ambition on a scale that the island neighbourhoods can no longer accommodate.

Lekki Phase 1 is the established core, the part that was built first and has matured into a genuine residential community with its own texture and pace. The roads are maintained with unusual consistency for Lagos. The proximity to the Atlantic gives the whole area a freshness of air that residents cite more than almost any other quality.

The architecture of Lekki has been shaped by a generation of developers who came of age watching what worked and what failed in Ikoyi and Victoria Island. The better properties here are cleaner in line than their predecessors, less ornamented, more considered in their relationship to climate, more likely to have been designed by architects who trained internationally.

Lekki attracts a different demographic than Ikoyi. Not less successful, different. These are professionals in their thirties and forties who are building, rather than resting on, what they have achieved. The energy of the neighbourhood reflects this: more restaurants, more new businesses, more construction. Lekki is not finished. That is exactly why a certain kind of buyer finds it compelling.