Space to Place: From Leftover Space to Public Space - Case of Nairobi’s Cbd. A Study on Re-appropriating Waste City Spaces to Solve the Current Public Space Crisis.

Abstract

Public spaces like parks, squares, streets, and playgrounds promote cultural vibrancy, create a sense of civic optimism, provide areas for recreation and social interaction, contribute to green infrastructure, and promote informal trade. Despite their importance, public spaces are continually overlooked in modern urban development and planning. This has led to an urban public space crisis globally. Urban public spaces are no longer free, welcoming, well-equipped, accessible, or adequately proportioned. In the case of the post-colonial city [Nairobi], they are inequitably distributed as a remnant of colonial planning. Furthermore, the areas that are chartered as public spaces—parks, squares, plazas, and the like—are rarely freely open to the public or dispersed fairly. Instead, they are rationed, poorly designed, securitized, militarized, and commercialized. Consequently, this study suggests repurposing “left-over space,” which is invariably present in all cities, to revitalize public space in developing cities. Left-over space is a typology of ‘wasted space’ that comes up because of poor spatial definition of spaces, urban design flaws that fail to encourage socialization, under-management, urban decay, or underutilization. Previous authors covering this typology of space in cities have called left-over space different names including ‘Residual space’, ‘urban void’, ‘dead space’, ‘wasteland’, and ‘negative space.’ Such space is often ‘unspoken for’, leading to informal re-appropriation by the districts within which they exist. Unfortunately, because of the lack of control, most left-over spaces are dingy, unsafe, lonely, unused, littered, and poorly maintained. They are often considered a ‘scar’ in the urban realm, visually or functionally. In Kenya, left-over city spaces are owned by the public and maintained by the city council. They are however grabbed by the informal sector within the districts they exist and/or the motor industry as legal or illegal parking. They include traffic islands, roundabouts, road reserves, pedestrian access lanes, service lanes, and streets around obsolete buildings. For this study, several sites within Nairobi’s CBD were analyzed, each as a representative of the different types of urban voids including Nairobi River Riparian zone (geographical), Kimathi lane (temporal-intermittent), Globe Roundabout (spatial), KFA Forecourt (Temporal-incessant). Qualitative approaches were mainly used for data collection and analysis because of the exploratory nature of the research. Both primary and secondary data were collected. Studying existing literature framed the research beforehand while field surveys, interviews, observation, photography, sketching, and note-taking were all used to gather raw data. This data was used to develop the history, spatial characteristics of the sites, and land use patterns, and map informal manifestations of human activity in waste spaces. The study revealed that residual spaces were found not only within cities but other metropolitan areas surrounding Nairobi. Their reasons for emergence were geographical challenges in planning, decay and obsolescence and poor space design, limiting positive attitude to space. Consequently, none of the selected left-over spaces were serving their ratified uses. They were considered dead zones that any user in the city could infiltrate, and often appropriated by the informal market within the individual districts in which they exist. Unfortunately, the informal reappropriation was disorderly, unruly, and at times incompatible within their context, devaluing expensive real estate. Per the objectives of this study, inherent spatial parameters leading to the growth of the urban scars were analyzed and urban design recommendations were made to reclaim the leftover spaces, therefore, adding to public space in the post-colonial city. This study conclusively proposes the adoption of these guidelines to re-invent dead city spaces and solve the urban space crisis in Nairobi.