An Empirical Investigation of non-economic Motives of Housing allocation in Residential Areas of Nairobi

Abstract

In most urban areas, residential land use takes up the -highest proportion of land. The residential accommodation comprises flats, detached and semi-detached houses on differing sizes of land. The heterogeneity of this accommodation reflects not only decisions taken by households at some time but also diversity in income, family structure, tastes and preferences as well as other socio-economic characteristics of households. Sociologists and city planners have used an economic theory to contribute to the theory of residential location which depends on the assumption that as the population of a city grew and the housing stock increased, the newest dwellings would always be occupied by the high income groups and that as the dwellings aged, they would filter down through the population, becoming cheaper and cheaper and being occupied successively by households of lower and lower incomes. The pattern of location of households with differing incomes would be determined by the pattern of growth of the city in the past. Many of these theories have concentrated upon institutional analysis to the exclusion of the individual actor. This study wishes to analyse the individual aspects of residential mobility and preferences in the process of residential location. The fact that residential accommodation in different parts of Nairobi is heterogeneous reflects not only that decisions are made with reference to choice of acco~modation by each household but also differences in income, capital accumulation, family structure etc. of these households. In making residential choices, households do not make decisions in a vacuum, rather the preferences that they express and the constraints that they experience are moulded by the nature of the wider social structure and by the immediate effects of the specific character of certain systems of housing production and allocation. This study sets out to examine the factors responsible for the current pattern of residential locations in Nairobi, more specifically, to analyse the factors that households consider in locating in a certain area and in a particular house. This is therefore a study on residential location based upon the survey, evaluation and comparison of eleven (11) localities selected from the metropolitan area of Nairobi, Kenya. These localities represent the full range of residential developments of Nairobi, planned and unplanned neighbourhoods, lowest to highest densities and lowest to highest incomes. The results from the eleven residential areas studied have revealed that although people of all socia-economic levels aspire to good quality housing with complementary facilities most people want a satisfactory physical and social environment, however, the degree to which this desire is satisfied is strongly related to the socia-economic stage that each house has reached. This study contends, that the socia-economic status of a household influences the choice of residential location. While lower income households tend to make developed residential location decisions which are influenced by such basic aspects as space, rent and distance to work, higher income households have more 'luxurious' factors such as neighbourhood and better house designs.