The World Health Organization (WHO), FIA Foundation, Global Road Safety Partnership and the World Bank recently co-published a manual titled “Pedestrian safety: a road safety manual for decision-makers and practitioners”.  On 07 May 2013, Nairobi Planning Innovation interviewed Dr. Meleckidzedeck Khayesi, one of the lead authors of the manual, to get his perspective on the findings and intentions of the project.

Please note that Dr. Khayesi and Dr. Margie Paden from the WHO Department of Violence and Injury Prevention Disability will be hosting a live discussion about pedestrian safety on Twitter, Friday, 17 May from 17:00-19:00 Nairobi time. Join the talk or send questions as Tweets to @UNRSC using the hash tag #walksafechat. For more information contact  vesicj@who.int.

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Nairobi Planning Innovations:: Please tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got engaged in issues of pedestrian safety as well as your role in producing this manual

Dr. Khayesi:  I am a Technical Officer in the Department of Violence and Injury at the World Health Organization (WHO). I studied at Kenyatta University earning a Bachelors degree in Education, a Master of Arts degree in Geography and a PhD in the field of Transportation Geography.  I have worked at the World Health Organization (WHO) for twelve years in the department of Violence and Injury.  Over the last seven or eight years, WHO has collaborated with the World Bank, FIA Foundation for the Automobile and Society and the Global Road Safety Partnership to produce a series of ‘how to’ manuals, which provide information on how to implement recommendations of the World report on traffic injury prevention. Included in this series are manuals on helmets (2006); drinking and driving (2007); speed management (2008); seat-belts and child restraints (2009); and data systems (2009).  The coalition’s most recent report, ‘Pedestrian safety: a road safety manual for decision-makers and practitioners’ is another step in this effort to provide information on measures to implement to pedestrian safety around the world.

Nairobi Planning Innovations: What was the most surprising aspect or finding in producing this manual?

Dr. Khayesi:  A surprising finding that resulted from the study was that fatalities occur and are of concern in cities and other regions of high-income and low-income and middle-income alike.  Every year more than 270,000 pedestrians lose their lives on the world’s roads. It is an issue that all citizens of the world should be concerned about.

Nairobi Planning Innovations: How important do you think this document is for Kenya and what do you think the largest barriers to implementing the documents recommendations will be for your country?

Dr. Khayesi:  Kenya was one of the target countries that we had in mind when producing this document.  The rate of road traffic deaths in Kenya is high at 20.9 per 100 000 population. Pedestrians formed 47% of road users killed in road traffic crashes in Kenya in 2010. There are also problems with pedestrian deaths between cities – in the suburban areas with a high number of people that commute from the periphery to the city daily. This document was designed for policy makers and planners in urban centres and sub-national regions to help decision makers identify areas of high risk and then implement solutions.

Nairobi Planning Innovations: Who do you hope will take up this manual and use it to create change – who is the document meant for?

Dr. Khayesi:   We hope that engineers, health professionals and city managers at the sub-national level will learn from the lessons in this document. The manual is intended to be used by those who are designing and developing transportation system and by the policy makers and decision-makers who are involved in making decisions around transportation and road safety.

Because this manual was produced by a coalition of organizations, it also serves the purpose of building a network among practitioners in the fields of traffic safety, health and infrastructure design.  The result of this coalition is a comprehensive resource on the subject of pedestrian safety; one that need not sit on a shelf, but instead act as a practical guide.

Nairobi Planning Innovations: Is the WHO planning to launch the “Pedestrian safety: a road safety manual for decision-makers and practitioners” in Kenya?

Dr. Khayesi: The manual is already freely available to anyone on the web at http://www.who.int/roadsafety/projects/manuals/pedestrian/en/. We will not be holding a specific document launch in Kenya, however the WHO will be delivering hard copy documents to many of our partners and related organizations in Kenya and other countries.

Nairobi Planning Innovations: Any last words of advice for advocates of safe streets?

Dr. Khayesi:  My wish for those in the field of pedestrian safety in all countries and at all levels, is that the issue is studied and addressed in a comprehensive way, involving  health, neighbourhood land use, traffic regulation, social norms and road design.  We need planners and those who manage cities and sub-national regions to be concerned with road traffic injuries and to make decisions which prevent these fatalities in the future.

The City of Nairobi has had quacks, clowns, and thieves at the top — men and women who were simply short-sighted. With the election of Governor Evans Kidero, let us hope that finally we will have administrative peace.

The leadership question in this city is not a recent problem. It goes back to 1900 when Nairobi was set up as “tinville”, and in the wrong place!

When Nairobi was hardly eight years, the administrators were warned that they had done a mistake by allowing the building of a town in a treeless windy plain where residents were constantly baked by the African sun.

Medical officers warned in 1906 that the grounds were soggy and urged Sir James Hayes Sadler, the then Commissioner of the East Africa Protectorate, to plead with London and have the town moved. As usual, bureaucracy reigned and railway interests surpassed the wishes of the majority.

One has to look at the 1902 letter written by Sadler and which said in part: “Doctors are unanimous in condemning this site. They pointed out that it was a depression with a very thin layer of soil and the decomposition of animal matter was abnormally slow. It should be removed”.

In 1908, when Winston Churchill arrived in Nairobi for a visit he agreed, and says as much in his book, My African Journey, that “the ground on which the town is built is low and generally swampy, the supply of water is indifferent and the situation generally unhealthy”.

Clowns appointed

That tells you something about the people who thought the swampy ground could hold a city. It is simply because Nairobi was being managed by clowns who had been appointed in 1900 as township leaders.

The best they could do was to set up an apartheid-based city — Africans to Eastlands, Asians to the North of Nairobi River, Europeans to Westlands, and Arabs and Somalis to Pangani and Eastleigh.

On March 30, 1950 when it became a city, the leaders did not look for a solution to the Nairobi problem. Instead, what we have are by-laws that intimidate residents. And they are as ridiculous as they are bizarre.

For instance, you cannot wail in public and the only reptile allowed in the city without a permit is a lizard! Again you cannot trim your hedges without a permit, but you can be prosecuted for failing to trim when ordered to do so.

Again, we must enforce some of the by-laws to keep the city clean. Every owner of a building is by law supposed to paint it after every two years.
I think only former Town Clerk John Gakuo tried to enforce this rule.

To start with, we must have a City Plan (there was one in the 1950s and 1970s). The late Mayor Steve “Magic” Mwangi tried to implement “the Nairobi-we-want” plan but was let down by councillors. Like Sadler, he was toppled by clowns and the inordinate Club 44.

We hope that Dr Kidero will look at his predecessors, learn from history and evade becoming yet another clown.

The Independent, Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) chairman Issack Hassan has recently announced that all returning elections officers are required to report results directly to the national tallying centre at the Bomas of Kenya in Nairobi (read more here).

The IEBC says that its delays are due to technical failure, but regardless, they leave voters eagerly awaiting results for the Presidential, Gubernatorial, Senatorial, Member of Parliament, and County Assembly races.  During this time, Nairobi resident Daisy Maritim reflects on the Nairobi Governor race:

Kenya: Reflections on the Nairobi Governor Race

…”It gets me thinking; do the candidates we have make the grade? And this takes me back to the guy I might have fallen for. I first laid my eyes on Cliff on the evening news when he was being roughed up and arrested in Embakasi. I might be mistaken; maybe he was pelting someone with stones. I can’t quite remember now.

What I vividly recall though is the gubernatorial ‘debate’ on Citizen News a few weeks ago when he faced off with the haughty Kidero. May I just slightly deviate by pointing out that all this talk of decentralization is doing things to us.

For one, it has augmented our political vocabulary and we now have words you can’t look up like ‘gubernatorial’ rolling off our tongues in everyday discourse.

Anyway, as I was saying, there was a ‘gubernatorial face off’. The next day, the internet was abuzz with discussions and comments on the Waititu-Kidero interview.

Few political occurrences have gained such unanimous opinions as that fiasco. I believe Kidero could not have appeared more contemptuous had he actually spat on Waititu! The word arrogant has since been invariably used to describe him.

Cliff, on the other hand was calm. He appeared to be in touch with the people and his feelings. Humbly bragging about starting 17 schools in a remarkably short period of time.

About always being on the frontlines with his people fighting greedy, corrupt Fat Cats. So you can see how the cool, calm and collected man of the people appealed to me. As he has done over the years to the residents of Kawangware, Embakasi, Eastleigh, Pumwani, Majengo, Kibagare, Mukuru, Umoja, Kayole……

Anyway, so here is what it boils down to. These are our contenders for Governor, ladies and gentlemen of Nairobi. On the one hand, a disdainful, ‘elitist’, highly educated PhD with years of experience in multiple high-powered jobs. The Solid Manager. However, this man seems worlds away and out of touch with the mwananchi ‘s daily struggle.

On the other, we have a rowdy, down to earth, police bashing, sheng speaking, spitting-as-he-speaks, Skilled Politician. A man whom Mutahi Ngunyi called a ‘Rocking Chair’ leader: “…keeps us busy, takes us nowhere!”

Here is where I am conflicted. My head is with Kidero, my heart is with Waititu. Notice that I do not mention their party affiliations. As far as I am concerned, those are tribal vehicles that are in place just to guide the colour schemes for their campaign outfits and tents.

Not to undermine the merits, achievements or even intentions of the two men, but I ask. Where are all the potential great leaders that would have us spoilt for choice and cause us to vote based on more solid issues than personality, or political strategy or for all we know, dress sense? (Think the wondrously flashy, mohawked, blinged up Sonko)

We are talking about the most important county. Our economic hub, Nairobi. So what do we want from the guy who clinches the all-important job?

This brings to mind my college days in Australia. I spent a lot of cumulative hours You-Tubing the (frequently drama filled) Kenyan news, and so I did a lot of reflection on the political and economic situation back home. Of course I couldn’t help but constantly draw comparisons; and I find that we can learn quite a bit from the federation of folks down under.

The Aussie ‘Premiers’ (counterparts to our governors) are so much more accessible than our most obscure MPs here who would probably have a bodyguard who has a bodyguard who has a guard dog armed with a gun. Anyway, that’s beside the point. And I’ll make two.

Firstly, A casual observer of the Australian system will tell you that one of the Premiers’ critical missions is to ensure that the State’s GSP (Gross State Product) goes up, and stays up.

The Premier of Western Australia, for instance, would work his rear end off to retain the State’s position of being the number one contributor to the country’s Mineral and Energy Export.

Why? Jobs for Western Australians. Top- notch infrastructure. Clean Streets. Smooth roads. Did I mention jobs for Western Australians? The Premier of Queensland, for the same reasons, would fiercely protect the tourism industry; nothing will jeopardize the Great Barrier Reef. Not on her watch.

Secondly, and as a consequence of the first point, everything worked! From the state bus service keeping a schedule, to the government office getting back to you when they said they would, to the garbage collection system. And I definitely don’t remember ever trying to avoid a pothole in Adelaide!

Now let’s examine the situation on our side of the ocean. Can a devolved system help us match the Australians? I don’t think it’s a thought too far-fetched.

One of the merits of devolution is that the local government is more closely watched by The People. Results, being more localized, are more visible.

And before you say it, I’ll say it myself. I am not too idealistic. Yes we may be, to paraphrase Kidero, “…a city under excrement ” but it doesn’t have to stay that way.

Maybe Waititu can excavate us from the stinking mess, with a noisy bulldozer in typical Baba Yao fashion. Or maybe Kidero can, shoveling in a systematic, strategically planned way. Both reaching the same end goal.

Let the central government worry about the big picture- foreign policy, defense and what not. For now, we can fix our eyes on these Governors county by county and see that the tea industry in Kericho is vitalized, tourism in Mombasa reaches an astronomical boom and indeed, that debt riddled, ill equipped Pan paper factory in Bungoma is restored back to its glory days.”

Daisy Maritim is an independent blogger in Nairobi Kenya.  Her article, ‘Kenya: Reflections on the Nairobi Governor Race’ was recently published in The Star newspaper (click here for link).

Early in the New Year, the proposed ‘Silicon Savannah’ progressed from an ICT Park to a 10 billion USD technology city. This progress was marked by the formation of the Konza Technopolis Development Authority (KOTDA) and design plans for the cities landmark building – the Konza City Technology Pavilion.

Located in Machakos and Makueni counties, the development will sit on over 5,000 acres of land and according to a recent report; it will be constructed over a period of twenty years using a public-private financing model (http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke).

In my opinion, Konza City is the perfect idea; one that I wish had been started about a decade ago.With a plan such as the Konza City Master Plan, all of the unplanned infrastructure and building structures that cause problems in unplanned cities would not be much of a problem in Konza City.

When looking at cities all over the world, the developed world, it is very simple to see why planned development is key for income inequality as well as for basic logistical planning:

• transportation services
• waste management
• energy distribution
• new development
• resource allocation
• location addresses

Effective addressing and transportation are two major impediments of unplanned developments. As a result, Nairobi is currently crippling with citizens having to incur high costs in travel due to a poor sense of addressing and an inadequate routing system.

Konza City for me is more of the kind of model that the new, devolved system should take. Because we are at an early state in the county government system, a prototype such as Konza City could help harness the full potential of a county system into a truly smarter Kenya.

This is all of course possible if there are enough investors and unfortunately the Konza City model is the guinea pig when it comes to development. Local investors who have an eye on short term investments will stay away from untested development models and continue to invest more in unplanned real estate within the already congested Nairobi city.  This will result in Konza City being fully owned by foreign investors, causing a draw of critics. I have seen much of the existing criticism mar the idea of the city but in my opinion, this is mostly from people who have not quite travelled the world to see what Kenya is missing out on by allowing such high amounts of unplanned growth in our cities.

Success belongs to the optimist. We have the full potential to show that planned development can work to our advantage.

Linet Kwamboka is a Software Engineer at Carnegie Mellon University Department of Computer Science. She has been a technology consultant in the Kenyan computing space including for the Government of Kenya and the World Bank on Open Data and Open Government Partnership. She is the author of the blog www.datascience.co.ke.

William Henry Ogilvie, the Scottish-Australian poet, wrote “These are the men with sun-tanned faces and keen far-sighted eyes, the men of the open spaces”. Open outdoor spaces are innately liberating, bequeathing to us the privilege of reflection and introspection.

By most accounts we will end this century as homo urbanus – wholly urban creatures. This demographic transition will see millions give up the vast airy purity of open spaces of the countryside for cloistered, stifling existence in the city – the concrete jungle of hard tarred roads, stone, glass, steel, parking lots, automobiles traffic congestion and polluted air. 

There is a large and growing body of evidence in ecology and psychology, which demonstrates an inherent human desire to connect with nature. The term “biophilia” was used by social psychologist Erich S. Fromm to describe a psychological attraction to things living things. In his book Biophilia, acclaimed biologist E.O. Wilson suggests that human beings subconsciously seek connections with the rest of life.

In his book, The Voice of the Earth, Theodore Roszak coined the word ecopsychology. Ecopsychology suggests that a synergistic relationship exists between planetary and human well-being. Wilson argued that people deprived of contact with nature suffer psychologically, causing measurable decline in human well-being.

Studies have linked the lack of windows with high rates of anxiety, depression and delirium among inpatients. Similarly, a study of patient recovery in a Pennsylvania hospital showed that patients whose rooms overlooked the parking lot recovered from illness more slowly compared to those whose rooms overlooked gardens with flowers and trees. The deep affiliations humans have with nature could be rooted in our biology.

Suppression of the ecological unconscious is the deepest root of collusive madness in industrial society. A study published last year in the journal Nature showed that mood and anxiety disorders are more prevalent among city dwellers. Other studies have shown that schizophrenia incidence is about doubled in people born and raised in cities, with evidence of a dose response relationship that points to causation.

A personal car enables efficient mobility in low-density urban or rural settings. But if you live in Nairobi, use of a personal mostly delivers immobility, not mobility. City driving has a price too. In a survey of adult drivers in twenty major world cities by IBM, 30% of the respondents reported stress from traffic congestion, 27% reported increased anger and 29% reported that traffic congestion impaired their performance at work or school. Other studies have traced the direct physiological effect of traffic congestion in raising blood pressure and release of stress hormones.

Nairobi has an overbearing physical imprint of the automobile. A disproportionate area of Nairobi is dedicated to highways, roads, streets, parking lots, service stations, vehicle oriented business and second-hand car dealerships. Pedestrian paths are rapid transit corridors for Matatu. Open public spaces are expansion frontiers for corrupt public officials and their acolytes.

Nairobi city is also a victim of engineering bias, focusing on one problem at a time. If the problem is traffic congestion, the solution is to build more highways. If you take a systems view and think of the street as serving multiple functions, like walking, biking, recreation and habitat the solution space will not be limited to ungainly concrete-walled road overpasses.

To reclaim the city of Nairobi for people the following investments are imperative: make public transportation the centerpiece of urban mobility; make highways, and streets pedestrian and bicycle friendly; and, convert 40% of parking spaces into green public spaces. Such investments would reduce carbon emissions, eliminate health-damaging pollution, incorporate exercise into daily routines and lower the risk of mental and lifestyle illnesses.

Kenya could learn from best practice elsewhere. In his tenure as mayor of Colombia’s city of Bogota, Enrique Penalosa created or rehabilitated 1,200 parks, built hundreds of kilometers of bicycle paths, introduced a bus rapid transit system and reduced rush-hour traffic by 40%. Mayor Penalosa involved local urban communities in greening their neighborhoods by planting 100,000 trees.

In 2007 Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled PlaNYC, an audacious plan to expand New York’s urban forests and ensure that all New Yorkers live within a 10-meter walk of a park. In 2001, Mayor Bertrand Delanoe was handed Europe’s worst traffic congestion and air quality – Paris. Mayor Bertrand pledged to cut traffic by 40 % by 2020. He invested high quality public transit for Parisians by providing transit in outlying regions, reducing number of lanes for cars and creating express lanes for buses and bicycles.

Kenya’s future is inextricably linked to urban growth. The future growth and expansion of our towns must focus on designing urban infrastructure for more people, not for more cars. We must therefore make the creation of an equitable and healthy urban environment, which is built to a human scale, a top policy priority.

Dr. Alex O. Awiti is an Ecosystems Ecologist based at the Aga Khan University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences (East Africa). Awiti is leading the development of one of the most innovative and integrated undergraduate science curriculum in Africa. Awiti is also a board member of the Resilience Alliance. Dr. Awiti is also a founder and director of Confluence Foundation, a not-for-profit that provides tuition aid to and mentorship to talented but economically disadvantaged young Kenyans. Born in Kisumu, Western Kenya, Awiti received his PhD degree in Ecosystems Ecology at the University of Nairobi.

Last month, amongst much fanfare, the Thika Highway Improvement Project came to an official close, although for another year the contractors will be liable for any needed changes. Thus it is timely to reflect on how people will come to terms with this new infrastructure that can allow for extremely high speeds in densely populated areas along the Nairobi-Thika Corridor. It might also be time to look more systematically at what this project can teach us for other ongoing or new highway projects such as the proposed World Bank-funded elevated Uhuru highway and the African Development Bank funded transformation of Outer Ring Road. It is time to ask ourselves, what are the broader implications of highway building for the Nairobi Metropolitan Region as a whole?

In a forum on November 20 at the University of Nairobi, academics, civil society and some government officials came together to review three recent studies on the social, environmental and engineering dimensions of the new highway. A portion of this meeting can be viewed online along with a previous forum hosted by the Kenya Alliance of Residents Association . What is clear is that a lot more public consultation, independent research and monitoring needs to take place on these large-scale projects that have huge impacts on the city region and on public coffers. One issue that came up was that, despite the right to information enshrined in Article 35 of the new Constitution, many of the researchers had difficulty in actually obtaining key information including the Environmental and Social Impact Assessments and the actual design plans. KARA also raised concerns about the quality of the public consultation and communication throughout the project, a point reflected in their report available online (http://csud.ei.columbia.edu).

Poor road design is partially caused by a lack of citizen engagement and feedback including from independent experts within local academic institutions. This combined with poor regulation leads to frightening numbers of road accidents, raising the negative costs of the highway (road accidents are now one of Kenya’s top public health issues). State of the art highway engineering involves “context dependent design and solutions” where engineers work with and consider all people affected by a project, not just drivers of vehicles but pedestrians, school children, cattle herders, business people, transport operators.  Context dependent design ensures that a highway plan takes into account settlements, transport hubs, important economic assets and how people move during the course of the day. Also safety audits during highway construction should be legally mandated and conducted by independent experts. As a number of participants noted during the 20 November forum, this requires a re-training of engineers and a re-fashioning of process around road building as well as institutional reform.

When it comes to the Thika Highway Improvement Project a number of problems arose because of a closed process of hiring consultants who employed a conventional, car-centric approach to highway construction. They also seemed to shy away from opening the design plans and process to adequate public scrutiny. This resulted initially in a very dangerous road. In the last year, the newly constructed Thika highway had to be significantly retrofitted under pressure from the African Development Bank and according to a report by engineers at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), may need additional changes.   The government’s obvious failure to take road safety seriously was reflected in the meager 12 footbridges that were planned across a span of 50.4 km of road cutting through highly populated cities and towns such as Nairobi and Ruiru. They were also not properly placed and did not link up to places where large numbers of people are likely to cross. Only after pressure, the Ministry of Roads has now agreed to 18, still a shockingly low number.

What will also happen, besides the deaths of people trying to run across the road at various points, is what happens in every place where a large highway cuts through a community, isolating one side from another. As Prof. Gariy from the JKUAT pointed out during the November forum, high speed category A highways are really not made for such built up areas like the Thika corridor. Because proper land controls are not in place, land speculation will mean an increase in the population growth along the highway which in turn, without adequate public transit, will lead to more congestion. It was Jane Jacobs in her famous book the Death and Life of American Cities who noted that expanding highways increases traffic and hence traffic congestion eventually.

Of course, as Senior Infrastructure Specialist for the African Development Bank George Makajuma noted at the forum (and it was to his immense credit that he has been very open and engaged), the traffic congestion will only improve with proper mass transit (bus, matatu, train service, walking and bicycle paths) and a better road network. This raises the question of why build massive highways before you start working on other needed changes in a careful and systematic way? And why if the same consulting firm that did the engineering designs for the highway and also had a contract to do the mass rapid transit study, were the two not linked? The engineering analysis presented at the forum showed that like safety, non-motorized transit, was an afterthought of the government and there was little connection between highway design and matatu, bus and train stops. This reflects the general lack of engagement by the project with key actors in the transport sector including public transportation operators.  Yet, a high quality public urban transportation system is a fundamental component to any “world class” city.

The plans for improving the Nairobi regional road network are under way but the truth is no integration of land use and transportation planning is occurring; if the current literature on the topic is correct, a failure to address this bigger problem before building highways, will lead to an expensive mess in one of East Africa’s most prized cities and regions. For example, there was a plan hatched somewhere to build a Greater Southern Bypass on the Southern end of the Nairobi National Park – a choice that would negatively impact tourism that boosts the economy and employment in the region, and the ecology and environment of the city. Now there is an idea to build an elevated highway along the current Uhuru highway. As architect Eric Kagada notes, “elevated highways become ’Chinese Walls that divide urban communities and create unpleasant and poorly kept environments. An elevated highway creates a virtual barrier which most residents below it will not cross.”

In truth, in many places including the United States, Europe and even China, planners and transport specialists are rethinking locating highways in the central core of the city. Many cities like New Haven are tearing down city center highways at great cost. Which brings me to the eight-lane strip of Uhuru highway that now severs the lovely University of Nairobi main campus from the center of the city and creates a hazard in crossing from one side to another: again, it seems neither the city nor the university were seriously involved in designing this stretch of highway. I predict that in the future this part of the highway will need to be torn up and redesigned to allow a more practical and safe circulation for both cars and people. Also no one travelling this stretch in a car can seriously entertain travelling at high speeds in the middle of the city.

Highways are wonderful symbols of modernity and power especially for a social class with cars. I have to admit Thika Highway is an impressive piece of infrastructure to travel on and even to just look at these days. Nevertheless, what we have learned, not only from the Thika highway project but also from examples across the world, is that highways do not belong in the core of a “world class” city (the bypasses, of course, make a lot of sense). Instead, Nairobi will need world class and cutting edge engineering, planning, and public transportation institutions to regulate and open up the process of how the city and region develop.  Since Nairobi’s transportation infrastructure will determine the growth of the city far into the future, it is time to work on first things first and avoid dangerous and potentially costly mistakes of large-scale highway projects in cities. In the end, not only will these highways create new problems, but they will also ultimately fail to fix the traffic problems they were designed to solve.

Dr. Jacqueline Klopp is Associate Research Scholar of the Earth Institute’s Center for Sustainable Urban Development (CSUD).

Published on 22 November 2012 in Business Daily by Immaculate Wairimu

Slums present challenges to the rapidly urbanizing world. They involve multiple dimensions where problematic situations occur, especially in terms of no satisfaction and even violation of dwellers rights. Past responses to change this reality often failed because they didn’t get to target the causes of the visual reality. This has been so, because of the partial vision of slums that misses the dynamism of a system where slums are an integral component.

This partial understanding of slums prevents policies from tackling the roots and thus succeeding in altering the logic behind the observable outcomes. Embedded in such approach is the relying on the formal/informal distinction. Through such lens, the whole urban system that encompasses low income residential areas is missed together with its complexity.

This study zooms therefore in one particular sub-system where formal and informal sectors are intertwined: low income urban housing. Specifically, the following pages study slums in Nairobi through the lens of governance, in which the housing market appears to bear a critical role. This allows placing slums in a more complex context and integrates low income residents to the wider urban tissue.

The question that guides the study is: What role does low-income renting play in Nairobi’s housing market? By shedding light on the answer, the study will provide some insights to the broader question of the extent to which the concept of informality holds to understand slums.

Slums present challenges to the rapidly urbanizing world. They involve multiple dimensions where problematic situations occur, especially in terms of no satisfaction and even violation of dwellers rights. Past responses to change this reality often failed because they didn’t get to target the causes of the visual reality. This has been so, because of the partial vision of slums. Such responses have been generally “based on the erroneous belief that provision of improved housing and related services (through slum upgrading) and physical eradication of slums will, on their own, solve the slum problem” (UN-Habitat, 2003). This approach misses the dynamism of a system where slums are an integral component.

This partial understanding of slums prevents policies from tackling the roots and thus succeeding in altering the logic behind the observable outcomes. Embedded in such approach is the relying on the formal/informal distinction. Through such lens, the whole urban system that encompasses low income residential areas is missed together with its complexity.

When concluding her paper “Tenement City: the emergence of multi-storey district through large-scale private landlordism in Nairobi”, Marie Huchzermeyer (2007) rightly calls for understanding, conceptualizing and addressing the developing World city “not only from the point of view of the ‘slum’, but from the wider urban residential market”. Departing from this call, the present paper seeks to expand the understanding of slums by turning to the lens of governance as a theoretical framework. Such theoretical framework expands the visualization of the city to grasp a whole system where slums are an interacting component more than an exception to the rule. It also allows demonstrating that there is a dynamic logic behind; and it requires to be incorporated to policies if they are to ease the problems that rest among Nairobi’s low-income residents.

In seeking to satisfy the aim, this study zooms in one particular sub-system where formal and informal sectors are intertwined: low income urban housing. Specifically, the following pages study slums in Nairobi through the lens of governance, in which the housing market appears to bear a critical role. This allows placing slums in a more complex context and integrates low income residents to the wider urban tissue.

The question that guides the study is: What role does low-income renting play inNairobi’s housing market? By shedding light on the answer, the study will provide some insights to the broader question of the extent to which the concept of informality holds to understand slums.

The relevance of studying slums reality through the perspective of governance stems from the great pressure urbanization is placing on cities and the repeatedly failure of policies to effectively re-channel the forces in the housing market to aid the affordability of deign housing by the lower-income population.

The paper starts by presenting the theoretical background where the contrast between the dichotomy formal/informal and the concept of governance is schematized. The second section identifies the conditions of the residential housing sector in Nairobi. A third part works on the analysis of the governance of such sector looking to provide its extended understanding and complexity. Finally, concluding remarks are provided.

Delfina Lopez Freijido is a graduate student at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs working towards a Masters degree in Public Administration, with a concentration on urban policy. In 2012, Delfina worked with the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, conducting research on the low-income housing market.

Last month, President Kibaki signed the National Transport and Safety Authority Bill of 2012 (http://www.standardmedia.co.ke).  The National Transport and Safety Authority Bill, 2012 is an Act for Parliament to provide for the establishment of the National Transport Safety Authority (NTSA), its powers and functions and for connected purposes.

The National Transport and Safety Authority Bill, 2012 is a welcome move Kenya.  It is welcome for many reasons chief amongst them is the hope that it may put in place strategies that may contribute to a reduction in the dramatic rise in road traffic crashes and deaths which are being experienced in Kenya today. Road traffic crashes exert huge burden to the Kenyan economy. From the time Kenya attained independence from the British rule in 1963 there has been a dramatic increase in traffic deaths in Kenya: from 548 in 1963 to 3,158 in 2008, a 476% increase over a period of 45 years.

This is an unfortunate situation since road traffic crashes are not “accidents” but crashes whose risk factors are known and modifiable. It will be a disaster if we allow our society to be held captive by the advancement in transport technology. Roads, vehicles and any other forms of transport in our society should not result in deaths of that magnitude. All efforts should be employed to ensure that strategies that are tested and proven to be protective to transport users and existing good practice in transport safety planning to prevent the rising trend in traffic deaths and injuries are systematically applied. We learn from the experience of several coun­tries that effective strategies for improving safety have a greater chance of success if there is a distinct govern­ment agency with the power and resources to plan and implement its activities. And that is why the idea of the NTSA is a welcome move.

The Bill on the creation of the National Transport and Safety Authority in Kenya is not a reinvention of the wheel. We are picking over from what has been implemented by quite a number of countries over four decades ago.  That is an advantage in that we can learn from their successes but avoid the pitfalls where they failed.  Kenya is a late comer but she can afford to run much faster because she has the lense to see what can be avoided. The experiences of Sweden and the United States are good examples. When these countries created traffic safety bodies separate from the main transport departments in the 1960s, they succeeded in implemen­tation, in a relatively short period of time, of a range of new road safety interventions. The Swedish Road Safety Office (SRSO) was established in the late 1960s with responsibility for road safety. Its creation saw the number of road deaths between 1970 and the mid-1980s reduced each year. In 1993, the SRSO merged with the more power­ful and better-resourced Swedish National Road Administration (SNRA) to which the ministries of transport and communications delegated full responsibility for road safety policy. Similarly, when the United States realized that they were experiencing dramatic increase in road traffic casualties, the Highway Safety Act of 1970 established a traffic safety agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administra­tion (NHTSA). The agency has the mandate for reducing deaths, injuries and economic losses resulting from motor vehicle crashes. These experiences are kind of similar to our scenario in Kenya today.

In Kenya, most of the functions which the NTSA is mandated to carry out were previously described to be the jurisdiction for the Road Transport Department which was operating through the framework of Traffic Act (Cap 403). By virtue of its specified jurisdiction, the Road Transport Department was aimed at promotion of road safety through its function of administering of the Traffic and Transport licensing. To the extent that it performed these responsibilities, the department was a significant player in promotion of road safety in Kenya. The department, which had two sections- the licensing and the vehicle information sections – was headed by the Registrar of Motor Vehicles.

The proposed elevation of the department to a status of Authority means that its muscles will be strengthened and much more energized. Hopefully, it will be more powerful and better resourced. Certain concerns surface quite distinctly and fast. The need to put in place proper and reliable transport information systems in Kenya has been voiced in several fora in Kenya. A lack of up-to-date and reliable information on vehicles on Kenyan roads and their owners; crashes and there characteristics; and traffic offences and convictions made has been identified as an obstacle to road traffic safety management. The need to institutionalize collection, storage, retrieval and analysis of traffic data has been recommended and the proposed NTSA should be fully briefed. The need for this can never be overemphasized if we are to embark on a serious and result-focused transport management and road safety strategies. The creation of this database is a task which is before the proposed Authority and to which I am quite optimistic they have the capacity to implement. Earlier suggestions exist, if one cares to check and these included: development of fully-operational Transport Integrated Management System (TIMS); standardized databases for road traffic aspects not covered by the TIMS; identification of an institutional home for TIMS and relevant data sharing institutions identified for inclusion in the programme fully operational.

The list of things which the Authority can do is long and impressive. Space and time do not allow for inclusion of all of them.  I will focus on the three things which, I would advice, the Authority should not do during its lifetime.  One, the authority should not commit the mistakes that highly-motorized nations made in attempts to improve safety.  One of these mistakes that can be avoided includes, investing heavily on apparently easy and intuitively sensible strategies and interventions but whose benefits are not research informed. This danger is more alive in road safety efforts. Road safety work is one area where everyone seems to have some fancy idea on what can be done to improve safety.

There is a naïve, but quite widespread conviction that the “road safety education and awareness creation” is a panacea for road safety problems. That is, if one mounts a heavy “awareness creation program” then one can succeed in dramatically reducing the frequency and magnitude of traffic deaths and injuries. The origin of this mindset, deeply inbuilt even among many career road safety workers is traced on strategies which had been aimed at diverting attention from real issues on road safety. These include the contribution of the vehicle and the roads environments which brings the responsibility beyond the mere blame on victim but also to the doorsteps of the planners of the whole transport system. The need for a paradigm shift in the way we need to approach road safety efforts can never be more emphasized. Data that authoritatively describe the real protective value of ‘road safety education’ may not be as easy to come by as one may imagine. Yet the constant and intuitive appeal it makes to many is overwhelming. Most workers, consultancies and many agencies conclude their work by recommending the “need for more safety education”.

The NTSA has a component on “safety education and awareness creation” and this is one of its proposed mandates. I guess it will have a budget. Most likely a huge budget and sometimes taking over from the other vote heads which are not easily implementable. It is not my intention to dismiss the contribution of road safety education as a strategy for improving the safety. What I want to caution against is the possible danger of obsession with its role and the inclination to view it as a panacea for all road safety problems. The NTSA should be very cautious on the amount of  resources apportioned to this strategy.

Two, the Authority should not neglect the research component. Research can overcome misconceptions and prejudices about road crash injuries. The NTSA should strengthen and adopt strategies or interven­tions based on evidence. If you ask developing countries like Sweden, Finland, United Kingdom, and similar countries that have managed to reduce road deaths in there respective countries to levels which are currently the lowest globally how they have succeeded in this effort, they will tell you that it did not come on a silver platter, neither did it take place overnight. They invested heavily on research and it paid dividends. The authority should encourage the development of rational decision-making in public policy based on impartial research and information.   This can only de done if the national research capacity on road safety is fully developed.  This is a key feature of the new model of road safety which the authority should embrace. All possible efforts should be made to create and encourage a cadre of national and local pro­fessionals who can use research findings to calcu­late the implications for policy and programmes. This is a task from which the authority should not shy away from.  The component of research is clearly included in the bill.  Fear however exists, fear based on past experiences with similar policy documents; to what extent will what is put on paper be put in practice?  This is the challenge. And the challenge is quite big in research aspect.  Research needs patience and resources. Research should strive to be as multidisciplinary as possible. Solution to road problems is not a preserve of one discipline.  It is not a monopoly of road engineers only. It is not a preserve of the Hospital Emergency Departments workers only. Road deaths affect our society in quite a variety of ways. These include societies left with widows and orphans to be cared for by the society; and, society deprived of its young and productive members. Its solution should, quite naturally, be multidisciplinary. The increasing contribution to road safety work by urban planners, sociologists and anthropologists is beginning to take an increasingly important dimension. Their contribution in research must be given the weight they bear. This is a task which stands before the Authority but to which I am optimistic it has the capacity to handle.

Three, authority should guide against failing to implement context-based road safety priorities. The mandate of the NRSA is to “register and license motor vehicles; conduct motor vehicle inspection and certification; develop and implement road safety”.  Research has consistently demonstrated the overrepresentation of pedestrians in traffic fatalities in Kenya. They are then followed by public transport vehicles. What is the implication of this, in terms of road safety priorities? The authority should is well-informed by this consistent data that there intervention priorities should list pedestrians and public transport safety topmost. Development and implementation of road safety strategies that do not pay serious attention to pedestrians and public transport vehicles will not result in real improvement in road safety. The problem of pedestrians is much more pronounced in urban areas like Nairobi where almost 70% of traffic deaths are pedestrians. Cyclists have been scared out of the roads and no longer constitute a significant share of urban mobility. Improved safety on our roads will definitey brings them back to the roads.  And good news, this will bring the synergy in health, space and increased social interactions.

Documented and well-tested strategies of reducing pedestrian and cyclist deaths on the roads exist for those who want see. Sweden, Netherlands and Germany, for example, have managed to reduce the number and frequency of pedestrians dying on the roads without compromising transportation by these modes. They offer decades of experience in reducing pedestrian fatalities. Tremendous work to a better understanding of the road injury problems of vulnerable road users (a term that is applied on pedestrians and cyclists because of their vulnerability to traffic crashes) and to identifying possible interventions in low-income and middle-income countries has come from the Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Center at the Institute of Technology in New Delhi, India. Africa can be benefit from the contribution of the Centre for Industrial and Scientific Research in South Africa. In New York City, a massive programme is being implemented in the streets to meet the needs of walkers and cyclists and to improve the safety of these categories of road users. The NTSA can encourage and strengthen collaboration with these centers to encourage the sharing of experiences. The clause of “motor vehicle inspection and certification” can be extended to include the mandatory provision of structural designs by the motor vehicle manufactures that are forgiving to pedestrians, in the case of a collision between pedestrian and motor vehicle.

The issues of incident management, which include the provision of medical care and rescue services after crashes have occurred, are currently inadequate and un-coordinated. The incident management can be improved by compelling roads, traffic, and medical authorities to develop, implement and operate incident management plans.

In conclusion, the NTSA should, in conducting road safety strategies, be guided by the concept of a systems approach to identify problems; formulate strategy set targets; monitor performance.

Japheths Ogendi, MPH is a PhD candidate and Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health at Maseno University in Kenya.  Mr Ogendi is an affiliate at the African Centre of Excellence for Studies in Public and Non-motorised Transport (ACET). Mr Ogendi is currently conducting research with the Earth Institute’s Center for Sustainable Urban Development (CSUD) as a Volvo Research and Educational Foundation exchange fellow.

Above: Cycling to Stomp out Cancer event, 13/10/12, Uhuru Gardens, Nairobi

On 13 October 2012, Wheels of Africa and HENZO Kenya held a bicycle rally to raise awareness around the impacts of cancer on patients and families.  HENZO Kenya, an affiliate of the Kenya Cancer Association, is a registered support group for patients of cancer, caregivers and volunteers. Since 2010, Cycling to Stomp out Cancer has been an annual event, bringing together health care professionals, community members and patients in the fight against cancer.

Wheels of Africa is dedicated to progressing the culture of cycling in Africa. Our vision is to mainstream cycling as a lifestyle and an alternative mode of transport in Africa.  With this we wish to broaden access to bicycling and all its benefits through hands on programs, commuter transportation, enterprising projects and events.

Together with the Ministry of Nairobi Metropolitan Development and the Nairobi City Council, Wheels of Africa aims to increase the percentage of trips by bicycle in the city of Nairobi, while simultaneously increasing the number of kilometers of bicycle lanes in the city. The new lanes will be dubbed, “the Green Lanes”, and they will include facilities for parking and locking bicycles throughout the Nairobi metropolitan region.

These bicycle-friendly infrastructure improvements will be the first step in lobbying the city around the importance of creating a Non-motorized Transportation Master Plan for Nairobi.

Wheels of Africa is seeking research interns who can help collect baseline information for both the planning of bicycle-friendly infrastructure and a future Non-motorized Transportation Plan. We are currently seeking grant funding to carry out this work, and appreciate any contacts or public input.