Proposal for urban authority untenable

Columnist Rasna Warah’s article on urbanisation and urban development in Kenya on Monday raised fundamental questions on the conflict between territory on one hand and sectoral interests on the other.

Her proposal that major cities and urban areas under the jurisdiction of counties could be re-constituted under a ‘well-funded’ urban authority that would focus on enhancing their competitiveness through targeted investment is a misconception. A single ‘urban authority’ that Warah proposes is likely to suffer the metropolitan complex.

Warah’s further suggestions on the role of this ‘urban authority’, for instance, deciding whether a bridge is vital to Mombasa’s growth, or an enlarged port to Kisumu’s, or whether solar panels should light up Nakuru, is against the principles of good governance as envisaged in our constitution. The Constitution provides for urban areas and cities embedded under the chapter on devolution (Article 184). The law further requires that urban areas demonstrate clearly institutionalised mechanisms for citizen participation before conferring them with city, municipality or town status. Setting up a national authority to manage cities will be unconstitutional

It is correct, however, that even with the preponderance of legislations such as the Urban Areas and Cities Act (2011), the challenge of managing urban development still persists.

Warah, however, raises a significant debate on institutional rescaling of urban development functions in order to optimally guide Kenya’s urbanisation. The space of urban planning and development is still highly contested between national and county governments. The implementation of the Urban Areas and Cities Act (2011) met obstacles right from the onset.

The creation of a national ‘urban authority’ may be a technically lazy solution because the reasons of lack of infrastructure and basic services in most urban areas, as glaring as it may be, is insufficient cause for re-structuring functional imperatives.