A Just Society: Humanizing Our Neighborhoods Have you ever imagined living in a ‘perfect’ neighborhood? What features come to mind when you think of an ideal community? Piped water? Proper waste management? Safety from crime? Nearby schools and hospitals? Accessible streets? A cleaner environment? Friendly neighbors? Better housing and energy sources? Safe open spaces? Whatever […]
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The Breather: Scenery in a Small Town While it is uncommon to find scenic views in unplanned neighborhoods—where designated ‘tourist’ areas dominate towns and cities, and the most frequently renovated spaces are public parks and streets, open spaces can still provide unexpected beauty. Ironic, isn’t it? As previously mentioned, the Star neighborhood lacks a communal
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Sanitation, Hygiene, and Water: The Communal Practices and Ideal This blog post covers the best practices on water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) from an urban planning perspective. The research problem is the neighborhood I was born in (Star). Issues relating to water, wastewater, and solid waste have already been highlighted in previous blogs. A recap is
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Culture: Mix them, Gather them My hometown is cosmopolitan, the perfect mix of all tribes and cultures. The beauty of these combos is that in a country so clouded and crowded with tribalism, the integration of various traditional systems, languages, practices, and ways of living encourages learning every day. Also, the famous slogan ‘we are
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The Straight Streets: An insight into periurban road networks in Kenya Lessons are drawn from my childhood neighbourhood: Star. In 2003, due to emptiness of streets and sparse development in this side of the town, cases of kidnapping and child molestation were rampant as most illegal dealings such as bhang trading were finalized in this
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Choices: To rent or to own? Lessons on home ownership in a small town The choice of living in my neighbourhood has its perks and also its disadvantages. The location advantage is its proximity to the central business district even though it is on the peripheral of the town map (if there is any), the
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The Game: The Role of Politics in Good Planning Think of finance, management, utilities and infrastructure, labour and one thing word that pops up is government. While people are supreme and sovereign, the state is run by political leaders and their goodwill towards development of the country. Think of the bills passed into law that
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Tales of Names: Identities The most popular question is in the name of a neighborhood, ours, though small has an answer to this question. Our neighborhood has popularly been known as ‘Site Kaburi’ but its official name as the government records it is ‘Site and Service Estate B’. If you would ask most residents of
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Surfaces and Deeps: An Excerpt About Agriculture This segment highlights the food basket of largely this town: agriculture. In the blog ‘plot and twists’, our neighborhood is mostly occupied by homeowners, kitchen gardening is common with most households growing their own vegetables (collard greens), there is a central market located at the fringe of our
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Plots and Twists: Housing Typologies As the new year dawned, it called on a reflection of how far our neighborhoods, cities and regions have come and celebrate every milestone in service provision. In this segment we will highlight the manifestation of housing typologies in my neighborhood. Overall, half of the residents are home owners while
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