LGI News: Give priority to urban planning

Picture from Jimnah Mbaru.com Story by JIMNAH MBARU (Daily Nation 9/8/2007)

["The transition from short to long term planning as represented by vision 2030 is a step in the right direction. Vision 2030 and its predecessor, the Economic Recovery Strategy, are watershed documents whose implementation will forever change the destiny and direction of the nation. The proof of the pudding, however, is in the eating. Time has come to start laying the foundation for implementing Vision 2030. Some of the items in the document require urgent bold policy actions. The Problem Of Urban Planning and development is one of them. According to Vision 2030, the population of Kenya will reach 60 million in the next 23 years. This will put Kenya in the same demographic league as current day Egypt. OTHER THAN THIS, THE MORE worrying phenomenon is that 65-70 per cent of the population will be residing in urban areas. Nairobi alone is expected grow to a population of 15 million people by 2030. This development will come with many challenges. While the entire country will bear the burden of providing resources for this big population, the urban areas will bear a disproportionate part of this burden. This will manifest itself in various ways. First, the increased urban population will have unique demographic traits, with high proportions of the youth and single parents. More young people will be moving from the rural areas to the urban areas in search of education and employment. Second, the already stretched resources in the urban areas will reach a crisis level unless measures are put in place to avert the inevitable. Housing and transportation will be key issues. One cannot belabour the problems with traffic jams in our major urban areas, especially in Nairobi and Mombasa. Intervention Left to their own devices, other urban problems will not just disappear. On the contrary, they will be aggravated as we move towards 2030. Pollution will not disappear through divine intervention and the crisis in council-run health and educational facilities can only get worse. Lack of sports and other recreational facilities will only be exacerbated by the rapid population growth and rural urban migration. Security, if an issue today, will be worse in another 23 years. All these issues do not require small, incremental improvements in the way we approach urban planning. On the contrary, they require strategic thinking and planning. This strategic thinking will necessitate restructuring of the bodies responsible for the management of urban centres. Today there appears to be no clear ownership of the planning processes in urban areas. Functions and responsibilities are straddled between various ministries. For example, the ministry of Housing whose mandate is to develop housing units has to ‘’beg’’ the city or town councils under the Ministry of Local Government to approve plans. While the councils are semi-autonomous in matters of health and education, the dependence on the parent Health and Education ministries is significant. THESE MANY LAYERS CREATE multiple glitches in urban management. To move to a more strategic approach, the starting point is to establish clear, single ownership of the urban planning responsibility. This could be done through the creation of a ministry for Housing and Urban Planning. A ministry for Housing and Urban Planning would largely inherit all the functions of the Ministry of Housing and the Ministry of Local Government. It by consolidating such functions that we can prepare our cities for the new challenges ahead. Mr Mbaru is the chairman of the Nairobi Stock Exchange"]

LGI News: Mayor wants new political city

Story by NATION Correspondents (9/7/2007)

A proposal to build a new political capital for Kenya has received the full backing of city mayor Dick Wathika. Saying this would speed up development, Mr Wathika added that moving administrative offices to a separate location would create room for the expansion of Nairobi as a commercial city. The mayor spoke in his office yesterday after he received an invitation from the Rotary Club members to attend its forthcoming African Conference. “I fully support moving the administrative offices to a new capital city and maintain Nairobi as a commercial city because it’s already too congested,” he said. But the new capital should be far away from Nairobi but in a spacious location to accommodate expansion. “It should not be too close to the commercial city so that we can have serious activities in two major capitals,” the mayor said. He proposed that Parliament be the first to be moved to the administrative city once it has been identified and named. This, he explained, would encourage other administrative offices to move to the new capital. Creating a new capital would require expansion of infrastructure and should therefore be well planned, Mr Wathika said.

LGI News: It’s not too late to slay poor urban planning ogre

From BD Africa (August 30, 2007)

By Emmanuel Wetang’ula

30-August-2007: Kiserian town is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

The above observation was made by the Constitutional Court in a decision that will have far reaching implications on many towns in the country suffering unco-ordinated and unplanned development.

As Nairobi teeters on the verge of bursting at its seams, it was made known that the city does not have a master plan, the last one having been formulated over two decades ago and largely ignored.

Similarly, other towns in the country have never had master plans. This has resulted in uncontrolled development, leading to the mushrooming of slums, pollution, traffic congestion and insecurity.

Back to the case: Waweru v/s Republic arose where some plot owners in Kiserian Township were charged with discharging raw sewage into a public water source and the environment.

The accused had erected residential cum commercial buildings on plots whose plans had been approved by Olkejuado County Council. Every building had a septic tank for disposal of solid waste.

The court argued that Kiserian is located on a water table and the buildings’ plans had been approved. However, due to the absence of a sewage plant, waste is emptied into Kiserian River, threatening the lives of users downstream.

The buildings’ owners were definitely strangers to the principle of sustainable development.

The court ruled that no further development should be undertaken in Kiserian Township without satisfying environmental and health requirements, including the provision of septic tanks and exhauster services.

The decision spells out the folly of uncontrolled development and the astronomical cost to be borne in trying to reverse the damage already done to the ecosystem.

It is obvious that law enforcement agencies have been the greatest failure. The grabbing of every little space, building across rivers, degazeting of forests, and so forth, have been the role of the Lands Office and Local Authorities.

Be that as it may, it is not too late to remedy the grim situation as per the judgment. Regulating land use is in the interest of the greater public, to secure proper resource utilisation and management.

The police force’s power is an attribute of the sovereignty of the State. It is high time such powers were invoked to save us from ourselves.

Wetang’ula is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya.

LGI News: But First, Try Easing Traffic Jams

From the Daily Nation (August 28, 2007)

"AT THE JUST-CONCLUDED annual convention of the Architectural Association of Kenya, Local Government minister Musikari Kombo said the Government would soon appoint a Nairobi Metropolitan Authority to reorganise the city by addressing issues of traffic congestion, uncontrolled developments, pollution and insecurity.

This is welcome news for Kenyans, especially those living in the city who, besides the other hazards, have been experiencing unending traffic jams.
Certainly, there is an urgent need to address the real causes of traffic jams in the city. Any slight disruption of traffic flow ends up causing great inconveniences to motorists and commuters as well.
At some point, the Transport ministry considered decongesting the city centre by doing away with passenger service vehicles that pick and drop passengers within the city centre.

Last year, Transport minister Chirau Ali Mwakwere warned that from March this year, 14-seater matatus were no longer to be licensed to operate in the central business districts of Nairobi and other major towns.

This, however, was not to be. It would not have had significant impact on reducing congestion in the city streets. After all, what have the chaotic traffic jams on Outering, Enterprise or Thika roads, more than five kilometres from the city centre, got to do with 14-seater matatus entering the CBD?
At the turn of the century, Nairobi became Kenya’s capital city. It lived up to its billing as the “City in the Sun”, but the last decade has seen it degenerate.
It is quite obvious that the initial planners of the urban centre had not anticipated the phenomenal growth of the city’s population.

Last year the City Council and the Nairobi Central Business District Association launched a pedestrianisation programme as one of the measures to restore the city’s lost glory. Under the programme, some streets are to be converted into pedestrian-only areas by paving them, and only allowing through traffic.
THIS HAS ALREADY BEEN COMPLEted in some streets such as Mama Ngina, and the results are astonishing. Besides the wider pavements, there are litter bins, newly planted trees, street lights and security surveillance devices.
It would be good for Nairobians if the authorities continued implementing such measures, considering that there are not enough parking spaces in the city centre, forcing motorists to park on the narrow streets.

One does not need to wait for the rush hour to notice that on any given day, at even mid-morning or early afternoon, the whole stretch of Moi Avenue between Kencom House and Harambee Avenue junction is turned into a one-lane highway because Citi Hoppa, Kenya Bus and Double M vehicles have to queue on this stretch as they await their turn to pick passengers at the Kencom bus stage.
Suggestions on the way out have been mooted from different quarters. Some have suggested that parking fees be increased for motorists in the city centre to discourage private car owners from coming to town. But without an alternative, isn’t this unfair to private motorists? Maybe we should go back to thinking how best we can use the revamped Rift Valley Railways to help ease the transport crisis in Nairobi.

Its management should seek ways to exploit this opportunity. With comfortably furnished coaches, clear timetables and competitive fares, many Nairobians will opt for this mode of transport."

Mr Owino is the editorial coordinator for ‘Engineering Review’ magazine.