By SHAZEEN RAHEMTULLA
Imagine having a beautiful
house sitting on immaculate lawns and flowers; but right outside your
fencing creaking shacks stare at you through your windows. Or the hooting and whooshing of a busy highway keeps blaring into your bedroom when you try to sleep.
fencing creaking shacks stare at you through your windows. Or the hooting and whooshing of a busy highway keeps blaring into your bedroom when you try to sleep.
Imagine wanting to go for a
walk, but not knowing who will get you first, the cars you’ll be
competing for space on the road with, or the thief up to no good. Or
will it be the effluent crossing the road with you, or the choking fumes
from the industry next door?
This is the nightmare that many city dwellers have to go through every day.
Spaces that should otherwise be havens of peace are turned into little hells-on-earth by poor planning and execution.
As
cities grow, they tend to overwhelm their original plans. Shops and
stalls are built on sewerage lines, causing blockages. Industries dump
their effluent into rivers. Mountains of trash grow in the middle of
informal settlements.
We have seen it happen all over the country. Slums have grown
seemingly overnight right next to posh estates, because lower income
urban residents are often ignored. We’ve witnessed green fields and
parks turned into high-rise offices because development controls are
left by the wayside in favour of brick and mortar.
The
future of urban living needs to be considered as just that – living. SDG
11 contends that all people should have safe an affordable housing,
access to public transport and services, access to green spaces for
recreation, and a clean environment.
The interconnected
nature of the sustainable development goals means that allowing people
to have access to good, affordable and safe urban services greatly
impacts their health, their ability to learn and work.
Homes,
in the same way, cannot be removed from the contexts they exist. As the
places where we hide our weary bones at the end of a hard day, homes
need to feel like home even on the journey there.
Homes
need to be in spaces where healthcare, leisure, work and play are all
in one area is slowly but surely becoming a reality. Gone are the days
of children getting home late from school because of absurd traffic.
Forgotten
are the times when water runs out just as your body has gotten enough
soap, where any shower of rain calls for gumboots because of substandard
drainage, where exaggerated electricity bills distort your monthly
budget.
The freedom and safety that one feels in their
house needs to be communicated in the environment around it. For a home
to truly be one, the area around it needs to allow the residents of the
home to walk about freely without having to fight for space with cars.
Children should have a place to play where they can fully enjoy
themselves without any cares in the world.
Families
should have a place to walk to and have an afternoon picnic sitting on
green grass under the shade of trees. They should be able to walk or
cycle to work and avoid the long gridlock that has become synonymous
with Nairobi’s streets.
Cities that have such homes are not simply a dream of hopeful people. They are actually being built today.
Cities
as we know them right now stand little chance of making it past the SDG
11 goalposts. However, changing how cities are developed, taking
Rendeavour’s model as an example, can propel the continent towards
building sustainable, safe and inclusive cities that allow people live
and thrive.
Sustainable urban developments mean no more
effluent flooding your roads, footpaths and cycle lanes on every road,
and recreational areas for everyone to relax and exercise in.
The writer is head of marketing and communication at Tatu City.
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