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Rapid urbanization and proliferation of slum settlements are among the major challenges facing developing countries. Slum settlements are notorious in lacking basic services such as safe drinking water, sanitation, durable dwellings. There is also lack of security of tenure with slum living populations in overcrowded spaces. Community needs assessments have become global best practices but grossly neglected in cities of developing countries such as Lagos, the focus of this paper. The paper examined the condition of selected slum settlements, access to urban services, estimated population of underserved households and strategies for improving governance of urban services in slum communities. Agege, Bariga and Itire-Ijesha were purposively selected out of the nine critical slum communities in Lagos and an upscale settlement (Ebute-Metta LSDPC Estate) was selected as the control. Cluster sampling approach was used to select 1,200 households based on a sample size of 0.55% of the populations of each selected settlement for the social survey. The results show that urban services and infrastructure in the selected slum settlements were inadequate with variations in intensity associated with their socioeconomic conditions. The slum settlements present a high sociodemographic diversity in terms of occupation, income level, housing and tenure situation compared to the upscale community. The condition of urban services such as drinking water, sanitation and toilet were rated as poor, but housing condition was rated as adequate in all the selected slum communities. All these services were rated as adequate in the upscale settlement …