Informal extension of public housing estates in Nairobi – an appraisal of historical typologies and emergent spatial patterns

ABSTRACT

Nairobi has historically been a laboratory for a diverse range of public housing estate typologies. Through a morphological approach, this paper analyses how Nairobi’s estates have been transformed by resident’s informal extensions and what impact the erstwhile typology had on their pattern of extensions. Using the concept of building culture, it identifies five socio-spatial logics used by the residents, namely disguising, enclosing, disclosing, embedding, and replacing. Nairobi’s housing estates have a future if the accumulated lessons of over six decades of public housing estates can be applied and when the existing building logics are harnessed.

KEYWORDS:

• Extensions
• public housing estates
• informal urbanism
• urban morphology
• Nairobi

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Kim Dovey for his feedback on an early version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. Calculation excluded those parts of the sample that were outside the estate. Main roads running through the estates were included.