Participatory Urban Planning in Mukuru, Nairobi

Mukuru, Nairobi, Kenya

By Yazid Mekhtoub; Nicola Stettler

participatory planning, community, collective decision making, education sector, slum upgrading

Participatory Urban Planning in Mukuru, Nairobi: Collectivizing the Formalization of the Education Sector.

Situated on the southern side Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, Mukuru is noted as one of the largest slums in the country. Covering 450 acres within the heart of the industrial district, the slum is home to more than 100,000 people. The majority of its residents lack access to most basic services such as water, sewage disposal and electricity. To tackle these issues, the city of Nairobi is embarking on an ambitious formalization plan to upgrade and deliver these essential services. The Kenyan authorities declared Mukuru a Special Planning Area (SPA) in August 2017. The goal of the SPA is to allow a two-year window to develop - through an inclusive and democratic process - a comprehensive plan that would be included in the Nairobi’s city development strategy. These different sectors are handled separately by different groups (collaborations of civil society, NGOs and city officials), who work to gather data and assist in developing solutions that encompass the community’s vision. In the end, the works of these different conglomerates would be amassed to formulate the final master plan as seen in the graphic below. Slum Dwellers International (SDI) in collaboration with a community-based group is assigned to oversee the formalization of the education sector. In this respect, SDI with the help of the community developed and distributed a survey collecting data on the 194 schools in Mukuru. The following is the configuration of the schools in Mukuru: 124 primary schools; 25 daycares; 24 kindergartens; 15 secondary schools; 4 vocational schools; and only two colleges. Besides this uneven categorical repartition of the schools, their spatial dispersal is even more unequal. Hence, the findings suggest that the formalization of the slum would require the demolition of certain schools. In this context, developing a ranking system is necessary to identify and preserve the schools with the best conditions and outstanding performances. As a part of the education consortium we were tasked with designing a paradigm that would ensure a non-conflictual, inclusive, and participatory environment that allows all stakeholders to participate in the process.

Ranking System Methodology

The survey data that was provided to us by the SDI had to be cleaned of superfluous and incomplete data. This involved condensing the survey into 11 concise questions, each representing different school characteristics. The user can then, by their own judgement, assign a weight to each question. Following this, the user is asked to weight each questions’ respective options on a scale between 100% (good) and 0% (bad). All residents of Mukuru can participate in the ranking process. Upon submission the schools will be displayed in a window based on their ranking values as shown below.

These scores can be added to the “add ranking” page to be averaged with the existing scores. By using the slider - located on the bottom of the map page - the user can filter the schools by their respective ranking.