I spent the first half of my summer lazing around New York, cycling, working not so long hours, gorging myself on Corey and Shane’s baked goods, and – with the exception of a fractured elbow – having an overall fantastic summer. Now it’s time for summer 2009 part deux: Nairobi, Kenya.
I arrived late last night after two days of travel. After spending 13 hours inside an airplane cabin sandwiched between a family with a baby and a hipster who played his music too loudly, I made my stop-over in Dubai. With a seven hour layover and drawn by rumors of fantastic tackiness, I decided to go ahead and venture outside the airport for the morning. So I did what any good American would do: I took a cab to the mall and went straight to Starbucks. Ridiculous, I know. But, the mall is fairly famous and was recommended to me by more than one person. Besides, I didn’t feel like dragging myself around downtown with my carry-on luggage, and was only feeling mildly adventurous. My Starbucks excuse? Well, there was nothing else open in the mall at 9am.
I managed to entertain myself in the Dubai Mall for all of about 45 minutes. I was delighted to see that not only can United Arab Emiratians indulge in Starbucks coffee just as easily as the average American, but they can also shop at various fine American establishments such as Forever 21 and Tiffany & Co. The mall was so high-class that it even included a smattering of fine French establishments such as Galleries Lafayette. Clearly, what made this mall “unique” and “worth-visiting” is that there is also a waterfall and an aquarium inside the mall. These things didn’t distract me from the fact that I was in a mall....and I am not such a huge fan of shopping. Really, I was more impressed with the Krispy Kreme… Oh, and the giant Hello Kitty store..
Although awfully sleepy and fried, I did leave Dubai with a strong opinion about the place (cause I don’t normally have strong opinions about things…right). My opinion? I have no desire to EVER go back to Dubai. Enveloped in a thick cloud of haze and pollution, Dubai was so impressive that it was unimpressive. The architecture was loud, flashy, and obnoxious. The city itself is so completely new that it wasn’t built yesterday, it was built this morning. The place reeked *new money!!* (think gated community).
The six-hour flight from Dubai to Nairobi was where I started to lose my marbles. I was so ready to be here, so exhausted from the lack of sleep, and so…smelly in fact, that I was really going insane. On a number of occasions on my flight, I had to close my eyes while tears streamed down my cheeks and remind myself to go to my “happy place.”
It was worth it though. After at least a half night’s sleep and one day in Nairobi, I am thoroughly impressed with the city and the people I have met so far. Everyone at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Nairobi is very excited to have me here and very eager to get started on the projects ahead. Which is great because there is an ass-ton of work to be done in the five and a half weeks that I am here. I think it will take time before we get into a rhythm of work together. For my part, I definitely need to revert back to my African time line. For example, I spent a total of four hours today waiting for various to show up at the university who, for every minute of those four hours, were “on their way.”
The project I’m working on started in 2004 with a grant from the Volvo foundation. Volvo decided they wanted to pour money into transportation research in a developing city. So the Center for Sustainable Urban Development (CSUD) at the Earth Institute was founded and teamed up with the Department of Urban and Regional Planning (DURP) at the University of Nairobi (UoN). A couple more Volvo grants, a Rockefeller grant, and a couple of years later, here we are. CSUD and DURP decided to focus on a satellite city of Nairobi, Ruiru. The Nairobi area was chosen because of its status as one of the most important, if not the most important, and metropolitan cities in sub-Saharan Africa. Ruiru was chosen because it exhibits all the same problems that Nairobi has (which are, incidentally, extremely similar to many other developing sub-Saharan cities), but on a smaller and more manageable scale. The municipal council in Ruiru was also very receptive to the idea of getting outside help for development and actually having a plan as they grow. So in November 2008, a local phyiscal development plan was created for Ruiru.
What I hope to accomplish while I’m here is just a small part of this project. I basically have four main things that need to be done while I am here:
- Create a community directory and map of all civil society groups and community organizations. Ruiru benefits from having a highly engaged community. The problem is that who these groups are and what they do has never been documented. My job is to create a directory of theses organizations and map them by ward to determine how they are spatially distributed throughout the city.
- Disseminate the development plan. The local physical plan has yet to be disseminated to civil society groups and community organizations. I need to come up with an abbreviated version of the plan (it’s more than 100 pages), figure out how to get it out to community groups, and get their feedback on the plan. Participatory urban planning at its finest, clearly.
- Create a municipal website. Yea, I don’t know anything about the internet. So this one is kind of funny. But another city outside of Nairobi, Mavoko, apparently has a stellar municipal website. So as long as I can find the guy who made that one, get some of those community groups involved, I can most likely pawn this job off on someone else. The beauty of it is that we can put the shortened development plan on the website. (NB: I’m actually having trouble seeing the point of this whole website thing, because I have yet to find an internet connection that doesn’t time out my webpages at least three times before they finally load…)
- Follow-up with University of Nairobi students and Columbia University students on pedagogical methodology. One of the coolest things about this project is that UoN planning students are actually involved in planning these cities. In addition, Columbia University students at SIPA and GSAPP have also been involved in these planning processes. So, I need to come up with a questionnaire to gauge their experiences working on the project and then see how the student involvement may need to be altered.
Yea, it’ll be a bit of work to get done in five and a half weeks, especially since my first half-week is nearly over. The good news is that I am definitely not doing the project alone. The DURP team is super involved and the majority of the groundwork is already in place. I am also excited. I was feeling a bit sheepish before leaving my ideal summer back in New York, but I regained my sense of adventure and independence during my 24+ hours of travel.
There are some things I know I can’t do well (econ); there are some things I’m still not sure about (crits?); and there are some things that I know I do well. And whether it be a political campaign in Oregon or a “development” project sur le terrain, I know I can do field work. So in the wise words of a teammate as we rolled up to the start line of a TTT, I got this shit on lockdown.
