Accessibility, mobility, and spatial justice in Nairobi, Kenya

ABSTRACT

A focus on motorized mobility has been subtracted from the advancement of the modes of mobility used by the majority in Nairobi, especially the most vulnerable, with a discernible outcome of injustices. This article explores mobility in relation to spatial justice through three accessibility dimensions—spatial, modal, and individual—that place significance on the comprehension and configuration of spatial justice in relation to mobility. Viewed from this perspective, the organization of space and the prioritization of the mobility needs of the most vulnerable present a notable way in which spatial justice unfolds and is understood. Through a spatial assessment of Nairobi’s urban growth and analysis of the existing modes of mobility, we find that the mono-centricity of Nairobi city contributes to challenges in accessibility to places of necessity. The city’s spatial layout where places of necessity cluster in the urban core, together with the spatial brokerage role of the central business district within the public transport network, speaks for greater attention to the reorganization of places of necessity. We argue that promoting transit-oriented development, investing in state-provided public transport and provision of safe non-motorized infrastructure are integral to advancing justice in relation to mobility and building an inclusive city for all.

KEYWORDS:

• Accessibility
• mobility
• spatial justice
• Nairobi

Acknowledgments

The authors sincerely thank the blind peer reviewers of this paper for their very valuable input.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The final year of completion of the surveys i.e. 2006 and 2016 appear as the years of reference throughout this paper.

2. Landsat analysis provides for the identification of parcels of land within the urban footprint that are as yet undeveloped, i.e., open spaces, parks, gardens etc. The Landsat analysis hence tends to produce lower estimates of total urban land. The calculated figure was therefore corrected from 688 sq. km to the current statistics of 696 sq. km according to the Kenya National Census 2019 report.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dorcas Nthoki Nyamai

Dorcas Nthoki Nyamai is a doctoral researcher at the International Planning Studies, Department of Spatial Planning, TU Dortmund, Germany. Her research investigates urban mobility and spatial justice in Nairobi with a focus on non-motorized mobility. She was a research assistant between 2015 and 2017 at the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS), Erasmus University Rotterdam and afterward engaged in a study on complex urban land markets and spatial justice with the Development Planning Unit (DPU), University College London. Currently, she investigates non-motorized mobility in rapidly urbanizing cities of the Global South within the context of epistemic justice and inequality.

Sophie Schramm

Sophie Schramm is professor and head of the research group International Planning Studies at the Department of Spatial Planning, TU Dortmund, Germany. She received her PhD for her thesis “City in Flow: Sanitation of Hanoi in Light of Social and Spatial Transformations (in German)” from TU Darmstadt in 2013. Between 2017 and 2019 she was Assistant Professor at the chair of Spatial Planning and Human Geography at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. In the past decades, she has studied dynamics of city-making in the Global South between spatial and infrastructure (transport) planning and everyday (mobility) practices.