NEMA is Not Enough: Kenya’s Need for Urban Planning

Kenya’s National Environmental Management Agency (NEMA) found itself regularly covered in the media this year with regard to the environmental impact of a number of housing and commercial developments that were controversially cleared by the Agency. Much of this revolved around developments allowed in riparian reserves - the area bordering rivers that should not have any permanent structures within 30 meters of either side of a river’s central point.

That this issue has received attention, with questions raised as to how effectively NEMA is serving its environmental watch dog role, is good news. However, the need for sound regulation and its enforcement with regard to the nature and type of development occurring in Kenya’s built environment goes beyond environmental concerns, and therefore beyond NEMA’s mandate.

Many of Kenya’s cities and towns are developing without current or sufficiently detailed growth plans in place. Nairobi has one of the most comprehensive zoning plans. Divided into 20 zones, the plan specifies how each area is to be used and recommends minimum plot sizes for each. For example, zone 2, roughly the Pangani and Eastleigh areas, allows for a mix of residential and commercial uses with minimum recommended plot sizes of about one-twentieth of a hectare.

However, this zoning plan was developed in 1979. Since then, the city has changed enormously and most of the zoning restrictions have been circumvented. The means by which this occurs is relatively simple: a developer applies for a change of user for his plot of land, say from residential to commercial. All change of user applications have to be posted outside the plot and in the newspapers. So long as no one objects, he pretty much gets to change how his land is used, and in some cases very substantially.

In cases where change of user applications are objected to by residents from the surrounding area, the final arbiter in okaying the development is usually NEMA. So long as the environmental audit - which, in a case of a bizarre conflict of interest, is paid for by the developer - shows that the change of user will not cause excessive environmental damage, the development is for the most part cleared. Zoning guidelines, in terms of commercial versus residential usage and density considerations, are generally taken to be indicative and can therefore be ignored. The main decision is made primarily on environmental grounds.

This is mistaken. The negative impact of a new development on the surrounding area can be more than environmental. For example, a small bar opening in a residential area may have little more impact on the natural environment than a couple of residential houses. However, a bar will certainly strongly impact its neighbours and how they are able to continue to use their property. Music and crowds may prevent them from having a quite family dinner in their patio, and, worse still, keep them up into the night. Should it be so bad that the family has to move to regain a normal level of residential peace, they will likely have to sell their property at a discount to compensate for the disturbance caused by the bar. (Unless they sell it to the bar owner; however, the problem continues - it is simply transferred to the next residential neighbour).

Therefore, built-space development concerns are not only environmental - they are fundamentally about maintaining property value (presumably a concern of many Business Daily readers).

The case of an economic benefit accruing to one individual (the bar owner) at the expense of society (his neighbours) is a classic case of market failure, similar to that of a polluting business making money at the expense of coughing children. Fixing the market’s misallocation of benefits and costs requires regulation, much the same way that cases of environmental pollution do. The regulatory fix in this case is a set of well considered and actively enforced zoning regulations, which detail the type of development allowed in a specific area of a town or city. Because all cities are constantly changing, such plans need to be regularly reviewed and occasionally revised. The revision of Nairobi’s 30 year old plan is much overdue.

The zoning revision process will be messy. There will be conflicting ideas about what the future destiny of an area should be. However, the conflict will have to be faced head on and compromises struck. Once done, property owners will have more certainly as to how their land and that of their neighbours can be used, now and in the future. This allows them to make informed decisions about whether to stay put or to sell off and move to an area with a different zoning profile. For those that do move, at least they will be assured that their next neighbourhood will not suddenly change on them from, say, a quiet residential area to a strip of choma joints.

Town planning or zoning is key to ensuring that people who purchase property do so with a good degree of predictability as to how their neighborhood will develop in the future, helping to inform their decisions about how to spend their hard-saved income. However, other than issues of property value and land use predictability, good zoning also ensures that different neighborhoods maintain their distinctive character, helping to manage the wonderful diversity that makes cities such interesting places in which to live.

Nairobi and other cities in Kenya have developed with not enough planning. There is time to rescue them still, but the zoning must start now.