Anyang’ Nyong’o
anyongo@yahoo.com
In 1975, 38 per cent of the world population was living in cities and urban areas. In 2050, just under 40 years from today, 61 per cent of the global population will be urbanised, and a good number of these will be residents in what is currently referred to as the Third World, or developing countries; and Kenya is among them.
The old theory that people migrate from rural to urban areas because of poor living conditions in the former no longer holds. There is a general exodus to urban centres, big and small, without any correlation to a specific push factor. The factors are many and varied from case to case and region-to-region: but the fact remains that urbanisation is the trend for the future, and we had better plan for it.
In our national planning, our psyche and even in the language we speak, however, we do not seem to have come to terms with this fact. As so-called markets in rural areas morph into large urban conglomerations we continue treating them as “markets”, or “urban areas” at times.
But even this change in name is rarely reflected in how these “areas” are planned, governed or provided with infrastructure. Old roads are at times improved without being aligned to a more rational urban grid. Sewerage is neglected for decades. Human waste is trapped in dangerous pit latrines, which are dangerous to health where piped water or boreholes are constructed.
While such chaotic urban growth is going on in rural areas the old established towns and cities are doing no better. Beyond the glittering lights and the crowded streets of the Central Business District (CBD) in Nairobi, one only needs to go beyond Moi Avenue eastwards to begin confronting disorder, filth, chaos, crime and the “urban wilderness”.
Around Adams Arcade to the West of the CBD the affluent have invented the convenience of shopping on streets and sacrificing sanitation at the same time. This phenomenon is repeated in every town and urban conglomeration. Shanty dwellers are in the meantime no longer confined to the peri-urban region of towns and cities: they have become a common feature of both.
How space is used for habitation obviously depends on the economic ability of the user: without much money to spend on a decent habitation a shanty will come in handy. And such a shanty may be built on a road reserve or a parking lot: it is still a space worth using notwithstanding its original purpose.
The cure for all this mischief is simple: national planning as envisaged in Vision 2030. The Vision may be there but its relevance to reality depends on how seriously and consistently it is pursued. My take, first and foremost, is that a National Commission on Urbanisation at the national level but replicated in every county is needed.
It will set standards on how a Kenyan city, town or urban centre should be planned and what it should look like. In the US, for example, one is guaranteed that every town will have a “main street”, and on that street there will be a bank, a post office, an information centre and perhaps a library. Other things like proper sanitation are a must.
Secondly, we must take our housing policy more seriously than we do at the moment. The work that was done in Nairobi for public housing in the fifties, sixties and seventies was commendable. The same thing happened in Kisumu, Mombasa and so on.
This commitment to affordable public housing for ordinary Kenyans must be prioritised.
Third, sanitation, sewerage and water provision in all urban centres – big and small – is perhaps even more urgent. In this day and age talking of flying toilets in a place like Kibera is as shameful as breaking the wind in front of one’s mother-in-law.
Fourth, a national urban renewal project is now as urgent as it is necessary. As our urban areas have mushroomed from within and without, certain forms of habitation no longer make economic sense. Hence we should not think of urban renewal simply in terms of getting rid of shanties, but of restructuring and redesigning space and land use more cost effectively and more humanely. For example, does it make sense to have the space in front of the Nairobi Railway Station to be used the way it is today? Further, does that area East of Tom Mboya Street all the way to Shauri Moyo, including Wakulima Market, make sense to be used as it is in future?
In the final analysis, our problems will not be solved simply by naming certain towns as cities: this is populist nonsense. The colonial regime left us with Nairobi as a city and some towns like Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru, Eldoret and so on. Since then we have renamed Mombasa and Kisumu as cities.
But politics without economics makes no sense. When those who govern our cities and urban areas are elected by first generation peasant migrants to the city and long term shanty dwellers (the sans-culottes) who see themselves as “outsiders” to the CBD, then indeed there is a crisis in our hands, and not just around the corner.
The elite in the city are only interested in urban governance when in trouble with urban service providers or when doing business with the urban authorities. The city or town is fragmented; no dominant social force pushes it in a positive direction, setting goals for its betterment, for catching up with its stars of development in the skies above. It is a contrived form of existence.
The writer is Kisumu County Senator
