A dichotomized spatial planning policy approach and the Informal- formal polarization in the Urban Areas of Kenya

Abstract

This paper contends that the proliferation of urban informality in Kenya is more pronounced in the former African settlements than in areas that were formerly occupied by Europeans and Asians during colonial rule. The paper opines that the root cause of persisting informality in the former African settlements can be found in dual land use management policies adopted during colonial rule which excluded the rural and urban African settlements from planning. Although post-colonial land use planning interventions have extended planning to the hitherto excluded areas of the former African settlements, master plans have failed to either remove the informality or resolve the land use conflicts in such areas. It is argued that in order to effectively control development in the former African zones, the components in the colonial policies and statutes, which created the European- African-divide must be understood and harmonized. It is demonstrated in this paper that the failure to understand the cause of the divide has resulted in frequent urban planning and legislative policy failure and this has further exacerbated the phenomenon of informality in the former African settlements. This paper borrows heavily from secondary data collected through desk research and corroborated by evidence gathered for the PhD dissertation by the author in 2008. The emerging scenario is that the properly planned areas are the former European and Asian zones while the former African settlements remain glaringly informal. This has resulted to the emergence of a dual city in post-colonial era: the formal city and the informal city. Further evidence shows that whereas the formal city is trapped, the informal city continues to expand towards the rural space in the form of sprawl