A POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INADEQUATE HOUSING IN KENYA: A CASE OF MATHARE VALLEY, NAIROBI

Yıl 2023, Cilt: 2 Sayı: 1, 67 - 90, 05.02.2023

Felistus Kinyanjui

Öz

The purpose of this article is to analyze the 100-year transformation of Mathare Valley settlement in Nairobi City County of Kenya. It answers the question of how the unwanted settlement has found a space for its residents against policy and fiscal odds to survive and provide housing for last one century to an urban poor who were otherwise considered vagrants by municipal authorities. Mathare Valley settlement is a shanty attributable to reliance on the use of readily available and cheap materials such as corrugated iron sheet, carton boards, cast-off timber and plastic sheeting for putting up the structures. The questions of economic rent and ‘who would meet the cost of municipal services’ rendered to the city in ‘unauthorized’ Mathare settlement dominated municipal and city council debates up to the 1950s and a legacy held by contemporary political elite. Mathare is a reflection of the resilience of the lumpen in the context of an unwelcome urbanization policy framework relegating it to unauthorized, informality, filth, disease, vagrancy and crime. Notwithstanding these challenges today Mathare is home to 60 % of Nairobians.

Anahtar Kelimeler

vagrancy, unauthorized, unsanitary, squalor, agency, self-help, vagrancy, unauthorized, unsanitary, squalor, agency, self-help

A Political Economy of Inadequate Housing in Kenya; A Case of Mathare Valley, Nairobi.

Öz

The purpose of this article is to analyze the 100-year transformation of Mathare Valley settlement in Nairobi City County of Kenya. It answers the question of how the unwanted settlement has found a space for its residents against policy and fiscal odds to survive and provide housing for last one century to an urban poor who were otherwise considered vagrants by municipal authorities. Mathare Valley settlement is a shanty attributable to reliance on the use of readily available and cheap materials such as corrugated iron sheet, carton boards, cast-off timber and plastic sheeting for putting up the structures. The questions of economic rent and ‘who would meet the cost of municipal services’ rendered to the city in ‘unauthorized’ Mathare settlement dominated municipal and city council debates up to the 1950s and a legacy held by contemporary political elite. Mathare is a reflection of the resilience of the lumpen in the context of an unwelcome urbanization policy framework relegating it to unauthorized, informality, filth, disease, vagrancy and crime. Notwithstanding these challenges today Mathare is home to 60 % of Nairobians.

Anahtar Kelimeler

unauthorized, unsanitary, squalor, agency, self-help

Kaynakça

• Republic of Kenya (2019). Population and Housing Census. KNBS.
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• Thieme, T. (2016). The ghetto will always be my living room.Hustling and belonging in the Nairobi slums.
• Tiwari, R. (1981). The origin, growth, and functional structures of Nairobi's Central Business District (CBD). in Obudho, R. (Ed.), Urbanization and development planning in Kenya. Kenya Literature Bureau.
• Werlin, H. (1966). The Nairobi City Council: A Study in Comparative Local Government, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Cambridge University Press.
• White, L. (1990). The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi. University of Chicago Press.