There is no economic philosophy, Bottoms-Up or Tops-down, that can justify the city managers letting the country’s capital degenerate into one big mad house. If there is one place that any person of reasonable temperament dreads to be in this city currently, then it is the Central Business District (CBD). This chaos have made it to headline news in the mainstream media.
However, for any keen observer, the City County Government is quietly converting any public space, road reserves, pedestrian pavements and utility spaces into hawkers' playing field. Besides, boda bodas have taken over every single space and ride from whatever direction of the city streets with impunity. Public Service Vehicles have also been allocated every single space of traditionally major retail streets like Tom Mboya, Accra Road, Luthuli Avenue, Ronald Ngala and River Road as drop-off and pick-up points for passengers.
The onslaught is not only limited to open spaces. The county leadership is currently embroiled in a bitter dispute with powerful resident associations over a non-participatory policy to re-open controlled development zones for high-rise buildings. It is unfortunate the politics of shareholding have taken the place of reason, common sense and proven means to national development in the management of the city
Ironically, as the capital city descends into planned chaos and disorder, the leaders of Kisumu County Government, the third city in the country, had to take a politically risky decision to clean the lakeside city of the same malady. Anybody who has been to Kisumu city of late can attest to the pleasant order and ambience of its CBD area.
For avoidance of doubt, this column does not in anyway seek to deviate from its core obligation of advocating for pro-poor economic policies. The hard reality is that the Kenya Kwanza administration seems to have stretched the ‘Hustlernomics’ way too far and out of context to time-tested development approaches.
Three questions easily emerge from this: One, can a country develop with such levels of disorder in its cities and urban areas? Two, what are the benefits and costs of letting the city slip into the hands of uncontrolled hawking menace? And three, do we have any empirical evidence of a country that have developed through such a model?
The evidence
Celebrated urban planner Alain Bertaud, in his book ‘Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities’, argues for the need to utilise urban economics tools to improve urban planning. According to this book, urban planning is a craft learned through practice and planners decisions have immediate impact on the ground. These impacts can be reflected on the width of streets, minimum size of land parcels and heights of buildings.
Bertuad opines that the salient element enshrined in urban economic theories, models and empirical evidence is the need to improve productivity of cities and welfare of urban citizens. To realise this objective, markets as central elements of urban areas provide an indispensable mechanism for cities development.
