MAUD Week 1 - Statement of Intent
Is gender mainstreaming in slum upgrade processes key to eradicating socio - spatial inequalities in rapidly growing cities such as Nairobi, Kenya?
Despite the number and diversity of global agendas focused on reducing spatial and social inequality in rapidly growing cities, issues regarding gender are often segregated into the category of ‘woman’ or ‘the marginalised’. Subsequently, those who engage with gender at a high level are often women, about women, to women.
Transformative change goes beyond the individual empowerment of women and requires the acknowledgement of gender in all categories and processes of city making, to create environments that do not perpetuate the existing violence and risk created through spatial inequality.
To explore how our cities can respond to rapid urbanization and growing social inequality, the informal settlement of Mukuru in Nairobi, Kenya will be used as a case study for a design project to explore how slum development at a neighbourhood scale could be used as a framework for larger, city wide development to ultimately eradicate social and spatial inequality and create more equitable cities.
Mukuru is the largest slum in Nairobi and is home to 100,000 Families, located in an industrial area 7km south east from the CBD. It has no formal water or sewage connections and has issues with ownership, preventing utilities from making legal connections. The lack of sanitation, lighting and sight lines creates a high level of risk for residents who have experienced a high number of sexual violence cases throughout the site’s history. Consequently, in 2014, a group of women from Mukuru marched outside of the ministry of health in a bid to create awareness of the inadequate living conditions.
Mukuru is being used by the government as a pilot scheme for large scale slum development, with The Nairobi City Council making a declaration of “Special Planning Status (SPA)” in March 2017. The declaration legally commits the government to deliver a plan within two years. The Government of Kenya “has experimented with different settlement development policies and strategies, ranging from forced eviction, resettlement, site and services schemes, and upgrading” (UN-HABITAT 2008,13) with little success. Mukuru is another government backed initiative, yet its difference from previous programmes comes from the diversity of its partnering institutions and research driven approach.
Slum dwellers International see the SPA as a unique “opportunity to develop, refine and demonstrate, how urban poverty and informality can be addressed at a city scale” and that the “conventional planning tool kit is insufficient to address the challenges of informality and the upgrading of slums, creating the space for new ways, new models and new relationships”. The design project will grapple with the benefits and downfalls of incremental upgrade on a large scale, and also how gender can be incorporated in all stages of the design and consequently urban planning processes to work towards more inclusive cities.