| dc.description.abstract | A view through Central Business Districts (CBD) of most Kenyan cities show that some buildings have
either been abandoned or been left unattended thus, enhancing dereliction and decay of the built
environment. Since it is not whole city centres that are decaying, it is likelys that the spatial structure and
hence the urban space patterns would be having something to do with social, economic and the
environmental survival of these capital assets. This paper has empirically established that 33 urban space
variables out of 436 variables significantly relate with dereliction and decay of built environment in the
Central Business District of the city of Nairobi. This has been done by regressing indexes relating to
abandonment, façade construction, completeness and exterior maintenance and cleanliness of buildings
bounding urban space against urban space variables: spatial, social, cultural and economic. These
established variables have been grouped into the following urban patterns: constitutedness of space,
segregation or integration of space, distributedness of space, grain, land use, and density. The paper
argues that most of these patterns have a lot to do with the presence and distribution of human in the
settlements. The paper concludes that humanization of settlements is very important in curbing the decay
of built environment | en |
