For Koolhaas, the key to understanding a city such as Lagos is the realization that it is not the controllable result of Western planning. The city should be seen as an anarchic organism in which the enterprise of the inhabitants turns any apparent disadvantage into an advantage: "Anguish over the city's shortcomings in traditional urban systems obscures the reasons for the continued, exuberant existence of Lagos and other megacities like it. These shortcomings have generated ingenious, critical alternative systems."

Yet, Koolhaas misses the point entirely about these phenomena, and sees them as proof that we do not need structures in place to organize cities, cities are perfectly capable of self-organisation. He highlights how the Alaba market is a self-regulating market with its own police and measures to combat 'faking' and rogue traders. In effect, Lagos' ability to self-organise, as if it were some mythical animal, is the result of people trying to get by in the absence of formal structures. Koolhaas over-emphasises self-organising mechanisms because that fits with his perception of the world as being beyond our control. Surely, it would be better for the market to benefit from proper policing, and it would be better for Nigerians to get new electronics and not have to recycle what the West discards.