What do you hate about Nairobi? You’re almost foaming at the mouth already, overwhelmed by the flood of horrors racing through your mind, aren’t you? Traffic that does not move. Rivers that are no longer water. A city that collapses every time the Kenya Meteorological Department promises heavy downpour for the city under the sun. Rock bottom, it turns out, has a basement Nairobi is still excavating. That boat question under “possessions” during the census is suddenly starting to make sense.
Often going unsaid in this chaos is that Nairobi is not unplanned. In fact, the city operates under the Nairobi Integrated Urban Development Master Plan, developed with support from the Japan International Cooperation Agency, Nairobi County urban planners, and funding from the World Bank. It is the first major planning framework since the Nairobi Metropolitan Growth Strategy of 1973. The crisis, therefore, is the persistent failure to implement and fund plans. This failure matters because cities sit at the centre of the planet’s breaking point.
Cities occupy just 3% of the Earth’s land surface, yet they house 55% of the global population, a figure projected to rise to 68% by 2050. More critically, they account for 70–80% of global CO₂ emissions. Humanity operates within nine planetary boundaries (climate change, change in biosphere integrity (biodiversity loss & species extinction), stratospheric ozone depletion, land system change (e.g., deforestation) & freshwater use) designed to maintain ecological stability, and six have already been crossed. Nairobi contributes directly to these breaches.
Traffic congestion fuels climate emissions. Urban sprawl pushes city boundaries into agricultural land, driving land system change and biodiversity loss. Pollution in the Nairobi River contributes to freshwater depletion and biogeochemical imbalance. The expansion of the Dandora dumpsite accelerates chemical and plastic pollution. Wetlands filled for development increase water stress and flood risk. These pressures disproportionately impact and harm vulnerable communities through displacement, flooding and environmental collapse.
To understand Nairobi’s present, one must confront its origins. Founded as a railway town in 1899, Nairobi’s growth was formalised through the 1948 Master Plan, which explicitly zoned the city by race. Urban planning functioned not as a public service but as a tool of colonial control.
Europeans were settled in leafy suburbs such as Karen and Muthaiga, Asians in areas like Parklands, while Africans were confined to so-called “temporary” labour quarters. Movement was tightly controlled through systems like the kipande in the 1930s, reinforcing the idea that Africans did not belong permanently in the city. Even street names reflected this hierarchy.
One partial exception was the Kaloleni Estate (1945–1948), which applied the Garden City Theory to African housing. For the first time, African workers were acknowledged as human beings with families, deserving of low-density housing, walkable spaces and private gardens. However, the intent stopped short of equity. Kaloleni was designed to house Africans cheaply, not equally. We remained physically and socially segregated from European neighbourhoods.
Today, the original structure of Kaloleni survives only in fragments. Post-independence neglect has led to overcrowding, illegal extensions and the disappearance of green spaces. Tabia za Wakenya Kanairo zile zile: beautiful plans undermined by weak follow-through.
The spatial logic of the 1948 Master Plan laid the foundation for modern Nairobi’s inequality. Wealth and poverty exist side by side, gated suburbs directly bordering informal settlements. The richest 10% of residents earn 45.2% of the city’s income, while the poorest 10% earn just 1.6%. More than 60% of Nairobi’s population lives in informal settlements such as Kibera, Mukuru and Mathare.
Crucially, informality does not mean illegality. Informal planning often emerges organically, particularly in rural and peri-urban areas (shops and nduthi sheds appearing along high-traffic routes). Yet formal systems frequently ignore and criminalise these realities rather than integrating them into city planning.
Cities grow along transport corridors, a pattern clearly visible along Thika Road, while others develop multiple nuclei, such as Eastleigh. Nairobi’s location itself was selected due to the presence of three rivers, yet those same rivers are now sites of pollution and contested redevelopment. Ongoing construction along the Nairobi River, funded by the Chinese government, raises unanswered questions about long-term sewer planning, environmental accountability and who ultimately benefits.
Flooding in 2024 was attributed to climate change, yet this explanation was used to justify evictions in informal settlements without notice or alternative planning. Poor drainage, construction along waterways and the neglect of minority communities remain unaddressed.
Kenya possesses a strong legal framework for urban planning, anchored by the Constitution of Kenya (2010) and the Physical and Land Use Planning Act (PLUPA, 2019). These laws establish planning hierarchies from National Spatial Plans to Local Physical Development Plans (LPDPs) and classify urban areas from small centres to cities like Nairobi and Mombasa.
In practice, however, implementation is weak. Zoning laws are undermined by spot zoning, allowing incompatible developments such as nightclubs in residential areas. Development approvals legally required within 60 days routinely take 6 to 18 months due to corruption or understaffing. Despite the Persons with Disabilities Act (2003), many new buildings remain inaccessible.
Alarmingly, Kenya has only three LPDPs nationwide. Any building constructed without reference to an LPDP is illegal. Ask your MCA whether your area has one, if you can find your MCA, that is.
Urban planning is inherently political and participation is a right. Citizens can engage through public forums during spatial plan reviews, submit written objections during approval processes and pursue cases in the Environment and Land Court.
These tools work. Rhapta Road residents successfully challenged high-rise developments that violated zoning limits in 2024–25. Karura Forest was saved from illegal land grabbing through sustained public resistance. Change is possible but it requires vigilance.
City-making is not the work of a single profession. It involves an entire ecosystem: urban planners, designers, architects, civil engineers, surveyors, construction managers, sustainability experts, researchers, county planners, NEMA officials, and building inspectors. The built environment is a field of overlapping roles, often strained by professional gatekeeping and politics.
Designers shape experience; planners manage policy, land use, and regulation. Both are necessary. Collaboration is everything.
Nairobi’s crisis is not accidental. It is the result of historical exclusion, weak enforcement, political neglect and the refusal to treat planning as a public good. Redesigning cities without demolition requires participation and respect for existing regulations. We must vote wisely, demand accountability, and involve communities meaningfully. Because cities are how we survive within a planet that is rapidly running out of room for error.
It seems that the chaos we face in our city (Nairobi in this case) is a creation of systemic dysfunction of the county and national governments to subtly make room for mischief. We are therefore left on our own while the institutions that should serve as our guardians are in an induced coma. Ultimately, we are left constantly and by default fighting against the establishment, which in this case is the government, and by extension the party in power and the excesses that come alongside it. The more defective and corrupt the regime we get, the angrier we get, and it seems to have reached a fever pitch at present.