Urban and Regional Planning: Comparative Planning

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URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING/COMPARITIVE PLANNING
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Introduction
The increased growth of the informal settlement will continue to be dominant form of
urbanization in most of the developing countries. The rapid urbanization and its related
consequences have been a challenge to handle and manage , in developing countries such as
Egypt and Kenya (Cervero, 2010, p. 782).
Housing plays a very important role in the quality and health of human life. Housing apart from
being a very essential asset, it has a much wide social, economic personal and cultural
significance. The manner in which housing is exchanged and produced has a great impact
over the development goals such as the poverty eradication and equity; the construction
methods and the location of housing can influence environmental sustainability and
mitigation of the natural disasters; and the design of housing both protects and reflects
essential elements of culture and often religious beliefs (Programme, 2013, p. 211). There is
also an agreement on the role of housing in creation of employment opportunities, specifically
for the unskilled labour, which is very important in boosting the economic development of
the developing countries. The main challenge is having access to the housing development
elements such as land, credit facilities and construction materials. This has resulted in
proliferation of the informal settlements. It is approximated that there are more than 100 million
homeless and approximately 1billioon people inadequately housed in the world. Needless to say,
the vast majority of this people are living in the developing countries (Birch, 2016, p. 461).
Developing countries accounts for approximately 80% of the global population. The population
growth of the developing countries currently is growing at a arête of 1.59% per annum as
shown in the figure shown below.

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NAIROBI KENYA
Nairobi, like any other city has witnessed an unprecedented increase in the urban population
over the past five decades. This has posed a great challenge to the urban economies which
have been unable to cope with the increasing demand for essential services such as
health, housing and education (Chattaraj, 2016, p. 782). Due to that more dwellers in Nairobi
live in poverty and reside in the overpopulated slums which are not connected to basic
amenities such as sewage system which are required to sustain the minimum level of living .
Currently it is estimated that approximately 1.5 million people live in informal settlements in
Nairobi. The 1.5 million people are confined to an area which is less than 5 percent of the
total municipal residential land. Segregation policies which used to be there during the
colonial era, post-independence policies of slum clearance and the recent lack of equitable

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and defined land have shaped the informal settlements in Nairobi and has greatly
contributed to the growth of slums such as Kibera.
Nairobi’s Informal settlements
The informal settlement in Nairobi has a long history which dates back to the colonial era,
where most of the Africans were not allowed to stay in the city’s designated residential real
since the residential areas were reserved for the Asian and Europeans. The Kenya during the
colonial period who came to the city in search of work were forced to create informal
residential settlement outside the Central Business District and the planned residential which
were largely ignored by the colonial government (Suhartini, 2016, p. 121).
Nairobi, is the capital city of Kenya and one of the largest cities in Africa, it is a business hub.
The population for Nairobi has grown has grown over the years from 11,500 in 1906 to 4.2
million people with majority of the Nairobians living in informal settlement and the slums
occupying less than 1% of the Nairobi’s area and less than 5% in the residential area. The
figure below is an illustration of the population increase over time in Nairobi.