Kenya’s urban development strategy is long overdue for a reset. For years, the public discourse around housing and real estate has centered on access to finance, mortgage uptake and cost of construction materials.
While these issues matter, they obscure a more structural and urgent problem: the lack of inclusive, predictable planning frameworks that align private investment with public interest.
If Kenya is to sustainably house its urbanisation and unlock the full economic potential of the property sector, we must institutionalise participatory planning as the foundation of our urban growth strategy.
The current trajectory is unsustainable. Real estate contributed 5.3 percent to GDP in 2024, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics. Yet this impressive number masks deep inefficiencies.
Projects that meet zoning and regulatory requirements are increasingly stalled or delayed due to opposition from communities, often citing lack of consultation, poor infrastructure readiness, or fears of overdevelopment. Developers are caught in a policy grey zone—compliant on paper but contested on the ground.
Nowhere is this more evident than in high-growth urban zones such as Nairobi’s Kileleshwa, where new zoning laws allow buildings up to 14 floors.
While such policies are necessary to accommodate growing demand and rising land costs, they have sparked protests not just against developers but also against residents’ associations, accused of making planning decisions without wider community input.
These dynamics are playing out across other urban centres, including Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru and Eldoret, where densification meets resistance in areas historically zoned for low density.
What is emerging is a tug-of-war between regulation and public legitimacy. In many cases, projects are perfectly legal but socially unacceptable due to how the process was handled.
And the costs are staggering. By 2023, more than Sh1.3 trillion worth of real estate developments were stalled due to planning delays, legal disputes or regulatory bottlenecks.
Beyond private sector losses, this erodes critical government revenue from stamp duty, VAT and capital gains tax, all vital in a tight fiscal environment.
These flashpoints point to a systemic failure: planning has remained too technocratic, too transactional, and disconnected from the people it ultimately affects.
Community engagement, where it happens, is often late-stage, superficial, or driven by compliance rather than collaboration. The result is predictable: delays, reputational damage, and rising mistrust between developers, regulators, and residents.
What is needed now is scale and systematisation. Kenya must move beyond isolated success stories and embed inclusive planning into national and county urban policy. This begins with formalising pre-approval stakeholder forums for all major developments.
Before a permit is issued, developers, county planners and residents should have an opportunity to review, debate, and amend proposed projects through a transparent process. We need structured dialogue platforms with clear timelines and binding outcomes.
Second, we must link zoning changes to infrastructure readiness. The reality is that population growth is outpacing infrastructure capacity in most urban areas. According to the Kenya Urban Support Programme, poor alignment between development and basic services, including water, power, drainage, roads, are among the top threats to urban liveability.
Developers cannot be expected to build in a vacuum, nor should residents be asked to accept new density without accompanying services.
Third, digital tools must be leveraged to make planning more inclusive and less opaque. Interactive zoning maps, online platforms for public feedback and digitised application processes can bring more transparency while reducing opportunities for manipulation and corruption.
When residents and developers can access the same information, mistrust diminishes, and collaboration becomes possible.
Inclusive planning is not a regulatory burden; it is an economic and social enabler. It reduces investment risk, unlocks land value and ensures that growth does not come at the expense of public trust.
Developers are not the enemy but critical agents of housing delivery, economic growth, and urban transformation. But without a clear, inclusive, and predictable planning framework, they will remain exposed to costly opposition and reputational risk.
Kenya is urbanising rapidly, and cities will grow whether we plan for it or not. The real question is whether that growth will be efficient, inclusive, and sustainable, or chaotic, contested and extractive.
The answer lies in whether we are bold enough to centre inclusive planning as a national priority, one that turns tension into dialogue, friction into consensus and developments into shared prosperity.
Samuel Kariuki is the Chief Executive Officer, Mi Vida Homes
