Competition - International Design Collaboration For Kenya

Kenya’s urban areas are undergoing dramatic population growth. UN Population Division projects that by 2050, the country’s urban population will increase from the current 12 million to approximated 43 million, close to 50% of the country’s total population. A significant share of this growth will be recorded in secondary and intermediate cities. This transition presents an equal share of challenges and opportunities to urban planning and development in Kenya.

 

During 2012-2015, UN-Habitat has provided “Support to Sustainable Urban Development in Kenya” through various projects; key among them is support to the Kenya Municipal Program (KMP) which entails the formulation of Integrated Strategic Urban Development Plans (ISUDPs) and Digital Topographical Mapping for select urban centers in Kenya. KMP is financed by the World Bank and executed by the Ministry of Land, Housing and Urban Development (MLHUD) through the Urban Development Department (UDD).

During the last quarter of 2015, the formulation of nine draft ISUDPs will be completed for Mombasa, Nakuru, Naivasha, Nyeri, Machakos, Thika, Embu, Kitui and Malindi towns. The main outputs of each ISUDP will be: a structure plan; land-use plan; sectoral plans (e.g. infrastructure such as water and sanitation, transportation, etc. and environment management plans); select detailed action area plans; and capital investment plans. The Digital Topographical Mapping will result in a set of topographical maps for town, thematic maps; Geographic Information System (GIS) database, including cadaster.

So far, UN-Habitat’s support to KMP has mainly focused on capacity development and technical advisory services in the Planning Departments of the county governments where the above planning processes are taking place. The support was expanded to include Kenya’s planning schools by advancing their training.
It is upon this extended support to the planning schools that UN-Habitat, in collaboration with the Urban Development Department (UDD) invites students from all over the world to an urban planning and design competition to complement the completion of the planning processes of the nine towns. Detailed planning and design will be a major component of implementing these urban plans. This implies that the county governments, upon approval of the ISUDPs, will embark on undertaking detailed planning for specifc sites.
The design competition is expected to run between January 2016 and May 2016. UN-Habitat and UDD will consider exhibiting a select number of the design proposals in Nairobi, Kenya in April, 2016, and during the Habitat III Conference in Quito, Ecuador from 17 – 20, October 2016.

Habitat III is the Third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development . The Habitat III focus is to reinvigorate the global commitment to sustainable urbanization, to focus on the implementation of a New Urban Agenda, and building on the 1996 Habitat II Agenda. The New Urban Agenda will be approved during Habitat III in Quito, which aligns with the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in October, 2015. Sustainable Development Goal No.11 recognizes the critical role – socially, economically and environmentally – that cities play in Sustainable Urban Development. Thus it states that by 2030, we should seek to “make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”, at all levels and across the continuum of human settlements.

Kenya has a relatively low urban population (projected at 25.6% by the UN Population Division in 2014), although this is set to increase significantly in the next four decades, when almost half of the country’s population is projected to be urban, translating into significant increase in the actual numbers. Despite the relatively low urbanization level, the existing urban centers are faced with numerous challenges that have undermined their role in driving structural transformation. Inadequate planning, poor urban governance and management, and under-investment in infrastructure and affordable low-cost housing have resulted in dysfunctional urban development in the country.

In 2006, the government of Kenya launched Kenya Vision 2030, whose agenda is to transform Kenya into a middle-income economy country. This vision acknowledges that urbanization will play a vital role in transforming Kenya’s social, political and economic landscapes. However, if current and future urban centers are not well planned and designed, effectively governed and managed, investments in infrastructure up-scaled and or matched to the desired levels, they will be incapable of driving this transformation. Whereas Kenya Vision 2030 has set the roadmap at the national level, only a few individual urban centers in the country have formulated development plans to guide the realization of Vision 2030. However, with a devolved government system that tasks governments with mandatory urban and regional planning, it is expected that urban centers will increasingly prepare development plans.

A combination of factors has resulted in the numerous challenges faced by Kenya’s secondary cities and intermediate towns. These include:

• Spontaneous growth, resulting in urban sprawl, informal developments, environmental degradation, ineffective urban form with inadequate public spaces, unequal distribution of social and commercial services, and overall unsustainable urban growth;
• Inadequate infrastructure such as roads, water and sanitation, solid waste management, electricity, recreation facilities, parking spaces etc.;
• Inadequate housing (especially affordable low-cost housing) and public amenities (e.g. public space, recreational parks, health and education facilities, social halls etc.);
• Ineffective land administration and land-use planning, characterized by illegal/informal land subdivisions that have contributed to a fragmented urban form, poor street network & connectivity, poor plotting pattern, and unplanned conversion of prime agricultural land to urban real estate;
• Inability or lack of integration of informal economic activities and increasing competition over urban space between “formal” and “informal activities”;
• Proliferation of informal settlements and their deteriorating conditions of living, often characterized by socio-economic deprivation;
• High unemployment rates, urban safety challenges and related social issues;
• Ineffective planning and governance institutions, characterized by inadequate capacity to plan and implement urban plans.

To address the above challenges the KMP undertook to formulate ISUDPs for selected towns in various counties in Kenya. This process is scheduled for completion in the last quarter of 2015. The competition aims to contribute to these ISUDPs by demonstrating the value of urban design in tapping the inherent potential of the towns and in addressing various challenges, including that of ineffective implementation of previous plans.

The Competition aims to create a momentum for greater urban design uptake by demonstrating the value of urban design in implementing ISUDPs in Kenya.

The specific objectives are:

• To enhance the urban design component of the ISUDPs;
• To present planning students with an opportunity to contribute to the process of the ISUD planning;
• To advance the applied learning skills of the participants;
• To illustrate the opportunities and limitations of the ISUDPs;
• To promote international inter-university collaborations as a platform for knowledge exchange and co-production of livable urban spaces.