Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Planning processes are often disconnected from the experienced place on the ground.
Ideologies of space, developing agendas, time constraints and budgets serve to limit
the understanding of the lived world of those dwelling in an area and stand at risk to
reduce it to the abstract space of maps. This induces territorial control from above and
an ignorance of the soft, social values of the individual.
Urbanization and globalization are reshaping our world and demands knowledge,
understanding and change. It generates changes in the urban fabric with growing
class differences and an increasing physical and social fragmentation. The majority of
this change is taking place in the global South, putting an immense pressure on the
informal settlements in the cities. Future urban planners have a big task in turning
this into a sustainable and equal process. However, planners keep imposing planning
ideals from above, shaped by western ideologies of space that are disregarding slums
as becoming one of the major human habitats. The relation between the life world on
the ground and the system world of the planner remain distant. How can planners and
landscape architects understand and manage their role in these processes better?
This thesis set out to explore that relationship. The first phase of that task was
undertaken through a field study in Nairobi, Kenya. Today, Nairobi host more than
200 informal settlements that are the home to more than half of the cities population.
The authors of the thesis got the opportunity to make a report for UN-Habitat, who
has recently introduced a new approach to slum upgrading that is emphasizing the role
of streets as an entry point. Focus in the report was the Korogocho Street Upgrading
Programme that involved the upgrading of the major streets in Korogocho Slum
in Nairobi. The Street Upgrading Project was studied from multiple levels though
the interaction with residents in Korogocho, policy makers, politicians and project
planners. The streets were considered to be a field where multiple strategies and tactics
of the actors were played out, shaping the experience of it and its future development. It
demonstrated many dimensions and symbolic meanings, highlighting several conflicts
between the system world and the life world.
Consequently, the thesis is a reflection upon the authors’ own working process in
Nairobi, and how they were affected by the system world of international organizations
such as UN-Habitat, policy making processes, the life world of the resident of
Korogocho and their own world as landscape architecture students. Theory, narratives
and reflections comment on the content of the published UN-report that was finalized
in Nairobi, issues and phenomena encountered in Korgocho, at the UN-Headquarters
and through interviews with local government agents. Furthermore, the methods and
tools used in the making of the report are commented, elaborated and evaluated. This
serves as an elaboration on the complex relationship between ideologies of space, the
multiple realities on the ground, and how this complicated issue can be approached as
a practicing landscape architect or planner.
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