Let’s plan ahead to avoid traffic, housing chaos

Children play at a Nairobi slum: Burst sewer pipes in the city are consequences of not having a physical plan. FILE  Nation Media Group

By Robert Bunyi

In Summary

• To accelerate economic growth a nation needs to massively improve its physical infrastructure.

The year-end festivities are well upon us. Many are nursing hangovers following days of merriment and joyous engagement with friends and family.

Most spent the few days leading up to the holidays commuting on our roads in a frenetic rush to complete purchases and prepare for the festivities.

To a casual observer of traffic trends in Nairobi, the days leading to December 25 were probably the most stressful to be out and about. The roads were packed with traffic and the side streets were no better.

A fellow columnist characterises Kenya’s urban centres as a hodge podge of informal structures akin to Kikopey.

In his words, formal urban planning was thrown out of the window immediately after independence and today our urban centres evolve, develop and expand only through the unbridled desires of the entrepreneur.

The consequences of not having a physical plan for Nairobi is manifest in the traffic jams, burst sewer pipes, insufficient potable water supply and piles of uncollected garbage almost everywhere we live.

This is really a sad situation that must be arrested immediately. We have taken the first step forward by writing our Vision 2030 that outlines very clearly our aspirations as a people.

Underpinning it all is the objective to raise economic growth rate to 10 per cent per annum. Truth be told, to accelerate economic growth a nation needs to massively improve its physical infrastructure. The singular aim of doing this is to enable economic activity to happen smoothly and at a low cost.

The challenge that we face today is translating Vision 2030 into specific actions we can take. I’d argue that our nascent county governments need to dissect the Vision 2030 document and internalise the opportunities that it promises.

The next step would be to assess the current state of the built environment within their boundaries and ask if the county offers a cost effective location for business.

This means thinking through the physical plan for the urban centres in the county and making the necessary investments to develop a new plan that will move the county forward.

These ideas are not new and have been employed in many countries around the world to spectacular result. Singapore and Dubai come to mind as some of the best examples.

The basic ingredient was a vision for the future that provides economic opportunity and following through by getting on board the best urban planners to develop and roll out a new plan for the city of the future.

Take Singapore for example, they have projected that the airport will continue to witness strong growth in passenger traffic over the next 10 years and have already put in place an expansion programme to accommodate 112 million passengers per year by 2023.

In 2012, the airport handled 51.2 million passengers but its physical facilities can handle 66 million passengers annually. Basically in Singapore they do not wait for the physical facilities to operate at full capacity before they plan an expansion, they plan ahead and roll out infrastructure well ahead of projected demand.