Nothing is more certain and regular as
change. It may tarry but it certainly will come to pass. Everything, everywhere
is changing Look at you, look around you – your neighborhood and community; the
country; Africa and the world. The only safe bet is on change.
We live in the epoch of great acceleration.
What this implies is that in our time the pace of change has been greatly
enhanced. Technology, human population, climate, urbanization, inequality are a
few examples that might give you a sense of the sweep of change.
But the change that is on my mind is the
pace at which human settlement is changing. Today Africa is the most rapidly
urbanizing landmass on the planet. By 2025, Africa’s urban population will
outstrip that of South America and Europe combined. In Kenya, the rate of
urbanization outpaces the rate of annual population growth by 60 percent. This
is simply breathtaking.
There are two sides to the urbanization
saga. The first is the unprecedented growth and messy sprawl associated with
existing urban areas such as Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu and Nakuru. The second is
the haphazard eruption of small towns and market centres such as Kitengela,
Rongai, Ahero, Luanda, Lessos, Mulot and Keroka.
That Kenya’s urban settlements are in a
state of chaos is an understatement. In the cities and big towns we are
confronted with intense squalor and poverty in informal settlements. A majority
of children born in urban settlements live in insanitary neighborhoods, lack
access to safe places to grow and play. Downtown Nairobi is drowning in
garbage. Less than 10 percent of the residents in Kenya’s large urban
settlements have access to running water on a regular basis.
Today, Kenya’s large metropolises like
Nairobi are choked by slums and enfeebled by unplanned urban sprawl. Blinded by
the grandeur of highways, we left behind common sense land use planning and
refused to be persuaded that investment in public transit was critical to
efficient mobility in large urban areas. Moreover, for some inexplicable reason
policymakers are convinced that a social housing has no place in our society.
Instead we believe that squalid unsafe housing by crooked private developers, which
collapse every so often, is good enough.
Small towns and market centres are growing
in a chaotic way. There is absolutely no planning. Residential and commercial
buildings erupt randomly, without thoughtful consideration of enabling
infrastructure and amenities, such as roads, street lighting, schools,
hospitals and recreational spaces. Kenya’s small towns and markets are domains
of unbridled private entrepreneurs, unbound by planning or building
regulations.
Urbanization is unstoppable, especially
because about 80 percent of our population is aged below 35 years, relatively
well educated and not enamored by rural life on a farm. Hence, we should accept
that urban settlements large, medium and small are going to get very much
larger in the decades to come.
But urbanization, even though rapid and
unprecedented must be orderly. We can manage urban growth and deliver equitable
prosperity for all “cityzens”.
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