Heath Coupe Line
Embracing Better Planning Models For Kenya
EMBRACING BETTER PLANNING by Sammy Ojenge
Planning is quite a complex process that constitutes a myriad of various dynamics. Good plans for any given time must come up with integrated applications of various structures. Planning has now become multi-sectoral allowing the marriage of across and within border sectors and lines. This in itself doesn't live out the need to bring together various inter-related conspectus and aspects that apply to planning as an entity and even profession.
Planning in the recent times has recognized the need to link up with other sectors. An instance is planning and health. For a long period of time, planners have not always done planning in the context of health. This has risen because planning in itself is done for man. Man in the individual context has to live and stay in an environment where life and general health is conducive. This then brings the aspect of sustainable planning which links up with sustainable development. It is a planning that embraces the need for posterity and present lifestyle of human beings. In planning therefore, the concept of human health has been so critical that any form of planning.
Planning has also revolutionized through time to include systems, dynamics and modalities that were previously not being used. This is in the quest to realize better and sustainable cities. In the context of Kenya, planning has shifted ways in the form of technology and even dynamics but has not been translated into the real tangible products of planning. This owes it facts from the medieval master plans that were used in planning decades ago. While new, technology comes into view, there needs to be structure that accommodates such tangible transformations. Other transformations that include abstract advancement in the field of knowledge have not really translated into the real planning.
Kenya therefore needs to have a stand-by point as far as planning advancement is concerned. This may be as a result of the difficulty to come up with a plan coup that would over haul the previous plans. Critiques have also pointed out the planning challenges that including coming up with totally different structure in an already planned and existing city. This therefore brings down certain city and urban planning advancements as merely a patch on already dilapidated and worn materials. It can also be compared to a renovation to an already destroyed and pot-holed highway. As a result of such a challenge, there need to be a very smart structure that would enable a decent but sustainable over-haul of old and non-sustaining master plans. Another instance may be a look at a wider city like Nairobi which already exists. Moi Avenue is a street that was a product of the medieval master plan. Through time, the city has expanded in terms of population and auto-mobiles. Challenges facing the city are several including others that have a multiplier effects thus trickling down to the lives and health of the urban populations. This are overcrowding, pollution, traffic jams, urban heat island among others. On the sides of Moi Avenue are buildings that have been erected across time. Planning for such an avenue would be difficult if new advanced plans have to be effected. This results in peripheral planning that is common in Nairobi and its environs. Peripheral planning involves planning for a core centre by employing changes in the city's linings. The central business district has employed this concept when planners have tried to try to control automobiles within the city by widening roads that move into the city, establishing major bus stations outside the city's centre.
Planning that is peripheral has faced more challenges than anticipated, more of it being hostile reactions from commuters, drivers and the urban residents in the wider context. The question therefore becomes, who can develop a planning framework that would sustainably transform a city like Nairobi without doing planning patches. Planning patches has a lot of disadvantages that advantages one of which is realization of short-term benefits. Short terms benefits to the planners, government and even folks in general means a waste of resources that are a critical in development of a developing country such as Kenya.
Much has not been brought into light as far as loopholes in planning within Kenya are concerned. In most instances planning has not been done without weighing the sustainability of such planning modalities. A city is a living being comprising of various structures. The several structures put human beings as core in everything. Human lifestyles are not stagnant but transform both in the negative and positive light across time. Planning should employ the concept of long-term change resistance. This can be challenged by the fact that not a single city in the world has been such insulative. In general, all should be done with sustainability as central and core in everything. Speaking of sustainability, a word that has been widely applied and used in the recent climate, environment and lifestyle developments, I may ask, how sustainable is our so called "sustainable developments". Weighing the sustenance of our popular "sustainable actions" doesn't really translate onto what we have largely held in our minds. Planning, development, heath and environment fields have employment great concepts of sustainability without much positive translations. There needs to be a score card that does interpret and lays evincible to real sustenance facts.
The challenges to any planner are therefore not light as they may seem on the façade. The problems draw their lines deeper above superficial layers that are within our scope. Planning to me can be one of the toughest professions in a number of ways. These include:
(i) Rigidity of our cities as a result of medieval master plans and the solidity of the urban structures
(ii) Inflexibility of some line ministries and line sectors to link up with planners. This may be as a result of,
(iii) Loopholes in policies that provide for linking or even lack of interactive structures
(iv) Peace meal nature of existing policies may also inform the myriad problems facing the planning profession.
(v) Planning has also failed to relate abstract concept to real-life tangible products in planning.
Planning in the context has also failed to relate abstract cultural concept in its planning modalities. Each an every society has its own cultural structures. Its such structures that lays much psychological significance to the lives any society's people. Planning that lays its core roots into a people's culture cuts a deep line into the lives of individuals. Cultural planning embraces the concept of localization of resources and concepts. Application of such a modality has got a psychological prowess over other import planning models.
Planning for any given country is in itself a challenging process and profession in its. For planning to be multi-sectoral and accommodative there needs to be a deeper understanding of the prospects of planning. Kenya, to me can seem to be quite a nut shell to crack owing to the fact that there are a great deal of constraints and barriers to the objectivity of the profession. Planning in its historical context owes its name from the word "plan" which means "a method of doing something that is worked out in advance" it is from such a context that we draw out planning.
Planning in developing countries has been associated with globalization n terms of the process of expansion and deepening of global markets for both commodities and services. The former has been facilitated by the rapid development of transportation and communication technologies, while the latter reflects trade liberalization.
In Kenya, there is need to revise the development plans through systems renewal. Renewal includes plans on growth management, air quality, liquid waste, solid waste, solid waste and recycling, drinking water.
sammodhiambo@gmail.com
+254724608493
KENYATTA UNIVERSITY, NAIROBI.
About the Author
The auther is a writer with Flamingo Africa and currently a student at Kenyatta University. He is also an expert in Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing.
SAMMY OJENGE
sammodhiambo@gmail.com
+254724608493
KENYATTA UNIVERSITY NAIROBI
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