The cost of Kenyan cities without planners, spaces without architects

Local authorities lack coherent, lasting approaches. In Nairobi, for instance, more than half of the residents live in less than a tenth of the city’s residential land area, shaped by non-professional planners or architects.

Instead of master plans, our cities grow through necessity, survival, and improvisation. County urban planning departments, underfunded and understaffed, chase after sprawling neighbourhoods with little success.

Misallocation of resources has bred dysfunctions that citizens endure daily, including overcrowding, unsafe streets and housing, and poor air quality.

Yet the towns keep swelling. How long can this be sustained? Entire neighbourhoods emerge from subdivided farmland without planning input. Land merchants and speculative subdivision dictate urban form more than registered professionals.

‘Ploti maguta maguta’ by brokers, coupled with delayed approvals and weak enforcement, encourages developers to focus on short-term return on investments, ignoring basic climate-responsive strategies and long-term sustainability.

Infrastructure is almost always an afterthought. Water, sewers, roads, markets, hospitals, schools, and public spaces are squeezed in retroactively, often with poor access.

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Even middle-class estates become unliveable once mushrooming extensions take over. Without comprehensive plans from the start, future outcome simulation is impossible.

Since planning is devolved, counties must prioritise integrated land-use and local development plans prepared by qualified professionals.

These must transcend five-year election cycles and outlast the whims of any political figurehead.

Self-built housing dominates in urban and peri-urban settlements. Families construct incrementally using mabati, timber, earth, or quarry stone. In most cases, the fundi doubles as an architect, favoured over professionals for being cheaper and more flexible. Communities adapt local resources creatively, driven by financial constraints.

From these realities emerges an architecture without architects of mixed-use typologies, vertical expansion, and resourceful modifications.

As things stand, the majority of our urban areas comprise over two-thirds residential buildings, most of which are irregular.

Some counties have moved to regularise such buildings, which is commendable, but must be done carefully. Only structures meeting minimum structural, health, and green standards should be approved.

The Architectural Association of Kenya’s Healthy Homes Guidelines and Checklist can help assess this ‘brown’ building stock.

The costs of sidelining professionals are severe. Functional chaos manifests in congestion, undersized infrastructure, flood-prone zones, and vanishing public spaces. Safety risks include collapsing buildings, poor ventilation and daylighting, and frequent fire hazards.

Environmental stresses from encroaching on wetlands, riverbanks, and natural forests deepen our climate crisis. Social fragmentation worsens as housing patterns reinforce inequality.

Yet informality also offers lessons. Our urban settlements show speed, affordability, and adaptability. These are qualities often strived for in formal planning. Community-led urbanism, integrating local knowledge, materials and labour, could outperform rigid, top-down expert approaches.

Architects and planners must build on this energy. Incremental housing models, if guided professionally, can deliver safe structures, efficient layouts, and resilient cities.

Streamlined approvals, incentivised compliance, and digital tools like GIS, AI, and participatory mapping could democratize planning. AAK has consistently advocated for a robust one-stop system for urban design, development control, and management.

Kenya’s urban future must merge vernacular creativity with professional standards.

Our cities are already being planned, albeit informally. The question is whether planners and architects will remain spectators, or step in to disrupt, regularise, and build responsibly atop what ordinary Kenyans are already creating.

The writer is the president of the Architectural Association of Kenya.