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Welcome to talk to aljazeera in the field with me Barnaby Phillips in the kenyan capital nairobi now this is a city that has played a big part in my life i spent some very happy childhood years here i have vivid memories of well i left when i was only ten years old way back in one thousand nine hundred Seventy Eight ive returned for reporting stood for aljazeera and its fascinating for me personally to see the changes nairobi is undergoing these possible. Changes in some cases for the better some cases for the world to help me understand nairobis journey ive been talking to some expert kenyans of my generation can help explain where this city has come from and where it might be going. In the one nine hundred seventy s. Kenya was celebrated as an african Success Story newly independent politically stable economically strong nairobi its proud capital it was caught between two identities was founded by the british and that colonial influence was still strong but it was trying to redefine itself as a modern african city in the seventys just like today it was a place of inequality a few lived well most struggle to survive. But the fundamental change between the nairobi i knew as a boy and the city of today is one. Of size the population has grown eight hundred percent a small manageable city has become a vast metropolis right my first stop was at the downtown arts complex run by joy boyer shes a woman of many talents actor singer architect and defender of nairobis heritage. Now in the one nine hundred seventy s. Kenya was a defacto one party state few dead question president job. Today its a multiparty democracy so i wanted joy to tell me if nairobis artists now have more freedom of expression since our sort of multiparty elections and particularly two thousand and two we in the cultural sector began to notice a shift we saw a Younger Generation sort of pick up the baton so to speak from previous artists and be bolder in terms of the themes that they were tackling with with music and with the spoken word we saw new art forms emerging contemporary dance you know sort of spring into the scene and then of course now with the sort of digital age were seeing a lot more younger people picking up cameras and and expressing and sharing through through those media as well so yes definitely a much a much more exciting space i know that sort of fifteen years ago in a visitor would come to nairobi and sort of say to us what what can we go and see we kind of had to stretch our you know sort of minds a little bit and say well we point them to disappoint them to that but now the city is full of something to do every single day thats connected to the so its actually very very vibrant as the city preserved its history during that time as it preserved what might have been good about the early independence you. Know i mean. Looking at generation now that you know we sort of say the kenyan population average age nineteen a very young population one of the things that i think is missing is a disconnect a lack of continuity between. The period before and now so that when youre looking at an understanding of history if youre looking at a connection between those who are the socalled movers and shakers in any of our sectors then and now there is little knowledge little continuity of that sort of understanding between between the generations which i think is a pity that that surely is the big change isnt it a city of half a million has become a city of what four and a half the fun of it maybe five it some people tell me thats right thats an incredible change in in such a short period of time absolutely absolutely i think if you walk around the city today of course road works construction densification you know sort of spaces that maybe you know if you were in the city thirty years ago you probably would have found a lot of open green spaces a lot of those are gone but i think the interesting and exciting thing is that there is an understanding within the city planning offices themselves now around sort of moving forward in creating a sustainable healthy city and so we have been fortunate enough to be part of those conversations of trying to think about how do we invent or is the public spaces reclaim them and make them in a spaces that the public can now use make a city that is sort of concerned around walkability and livability do we have too many cars yes of course we do how do we sort of encourage people to cycle how do we sort of say theres nothing wrong with walking. Sort of begin to think about a public transport system that is not choked by many many many little more tattoos that you sort of have something thats a bit more you know kind of coherent and systematic so these are things that these are things that we actually discussing now and i think that is important you sound like a bold visionary but you also sound like someone whos whos very optimistic when i think about the demographic pressures when i think about im sorry to say how this city in this country is associated with corruption is anyone listening to you when you talk about cycle power so restoring parks. In the city center in the years yes year i mean i think that always there are some individuals who we know within these spaces within public Space Government who are open minded and who are looking ahead and i know that certainly the individuals who are currently sitting in them in the Nairobi Urban Planning Department are very open minded a very proactive and theyre very visionary be honest with me here if nairobi and of the one nine hundred sixty s. Or seventys could be transplanted into the city of twenty seventeen with they be horrified or were they be proud of what had happened here i think theyd be horrified to some extent i think because i think that there is a lot of. Planned development that has that has taken place. If you look at the city some parts of the city are actually very very filthy garbage collection incomplete road. Construction thats actually not been planned properly so yes i think that theyd be horrified if it were your biggest regrets personally of opportunities nairobi might have missed since independence my i think i think that you know just the. The planning i think that that was a missed opportunity i think that we we inherited a city that of course was a colonial city. And we had a chance to begin to think about how do we sort of become urban africans if i can sort of phrase it that way and what sort of african city if they such a thing do we want to be in i think we didnt have that conversation i think that of course there were other pressing things we worrying about education we were going about industry we were going about the economy but we were not thinking about these things in the way that we now think about them that the urban infrastructure or any sort of infrastructure that youre putting down of course is coherent with all of the other things that youre planning and so now i think were realizing that that holistic approach which we are beginning to to adopt was something that we probably should have looked at really early on and the end effects effects a clear effects a clear i can recall from from the seventys certainly that my kenyan friends if you ask them where theyre from they never really said nairobi there isnt one could do you im from mount kenya im luhan from. Wherever they were from. If i ask young kenyans today do people think they are nairobi and do they think of themselves as nairobi and i dont think so i think that the majority dont actually know that sense of identity is still business its a work in progress you know because i know that about you know sort of half a decade ago we started a conversation around nairobi identity and of course we it was very clear to us that many of us do not see ourselves as nairobi and nairobi and nairobi still the place where we come for work we come from school will probably raise our families to a certain extent here and then we will go and retire somewhere else but there is still a generation now that is born here and that actually has now we could ties with the socalled rural base and that is for me the beginning of that nairobi and and one of the things that im keen to see is how do they sort of take ownership of the space as their spaces their home how do they engage with it how do they participate in making it the sort of city that they would like it to be the story of nairobi is in many ways i suppose a typical story of a postindependence african city. Incredible demographic growth. Enormous wealth for some but terrible inequalities as well who would you agree with that absolutely absolutely and its clear i mean in fact when you look at the city of course the city was the segregated city before independence and you can see the effects of segregation but now religion white areas absolutely in areas absolutely there is absolutely that doesnt exist that doesnt exist so much in that sense you now see it more as an economic segregation so you see that the eastern part of the city is where you probably have the lower income groups. Really congested tight development unplanned development over there and then he sort of have the other part of the city the western part of the city which were then you know the former white neighborhoods where again there is you know sort of a densification of structure. But more pleasant spaces to live in and actually people who are economically well off so the city is yes definitely segregated along economic lines many people in the city are struggling to earn a livelihood many people are employed in the city so it is not a city that is. A welcoming city a comfortable city for for the newcomer. And yet it is a city that the newcomer continues to flock to from from all over kenya why everybodys hopeful i think thinking that they will probably be the lucky one to get a job or to be or to be able to start something a Small Business or you know whether its selling bananas by the roadside or fixing a car or being a cobbler with everything i think everybody thinks that there is enough of a population enough of an opportunity and i think the other thing that we saw just in our discussions around identity was that the city is a space that allows you to in a sense cut ties from from tradition and heritage you can remake yourself and i think the number of young people probably find that the that the city is a space where they can remake themselves they can imagine themselves to be Something Else but of course they then also find that its not automatic its very hard and it can be quite disillusioning. Lets look forward ten years. What would you most like to change in nairobi to make this a better city for the millions of people who live in. Mine ten years time and ten years is a very short time but one of the things that i hope we would have is is just dealing with the transport you know i dont live very far away from where i work on a good day it would probably take me about fifteen eighteen minutes when i leave here at six oclock trying to head home it could take me an hour it could take me on a half so the congestion on the roads its just the that planning of urban transportation i think is absolutely critical but then i think the other thing that i hope would happen with sort of Infrastructure Development is also just a sense of our own Civic Engagement and pride in who we are as nairobi and you know how do we how does it how do how do our governors sort of instill promote and encourage that sort of sense of being a proud nairobi and i rubin who engages in iraq being who asks and i rubin who participates im hoping that in ten years time itll be a different arab you know people say im a proud nairobi and. Now robi is fast becoming a high rise city toll buildings springing up all over the place but is the city losing its identity during this process ive been talking to one of nairobis leading critics charles care who or has watched and participated in nairobi transformation does he see any call to duty with the city of the one nine hundred seventy s. They call him has changed the population has changed the port difference the culture into mean being there been a zation so many things have changed that that never abuse certainly wouldnt be there a lot of the a bit of it is there a bit of the. Specter of nairobi that is their dream and so we didnt feel but infrastructurally weve got a totally different city and that process of change if anything seems to be accelerating in recent years its actually what you call it its an it changes year on year on year out narrow b. Ten years ago is a totally different era be it from the never been ten years prior to that and if you actually move it a little short and there will be in five years changes a lot in two years ten years a lot of. The infrastructure definition of roads in the last five years alone in the city of nairobi is so much that a person who was here five years ago would actually need a gated to it to get there we are all giant roads that did not exist overpasses we have underpasses we have dual carriageways that didnt exist we have four lanes on the roads if you go to the law in committee as neighborhoods as well within a year youd actually need a gated to or to get to where you are going thats how rapid the transformation is in arabic because even slum areas are growing very very quickly essentially so theyre also growing their own definition on the roads the growth of need most of it is driven by the demand for housing the demand for commodities and a demand for Business Enterprises so you look at the slum areas that get their growth is also. Astronomical in terms of populous so that population has to be accommodated look at the media income areas the same same kind of thing you look at the car my shoe areas the demand for commercial space and has actually. Braves the demand for infrastructure definition all these incredible skyscrapers which have gone up and which are still going up and i gather even more of planned in the coming years higher and higher wheres the money coming from is easy kenyan money or is it International Money pouring into the city this is a lot of kenyan money a lot of it does a lot of International Money from International InvestorsInternational Establishment who have established themselves you like banks. Insurance companies you find them defending a lot of their enterprise visit a lot of partnerships especially within the commercial sector with respect to retail outlets ok so that that brings a lot of external money to local money and most of the Residential Development is actually internal money and very least the least bit to develop leads to at least investor in terms of development of this country is government because apart from the infrastructure the roads and the rail is there and other people rooting for structures his terms government hasnt done many serious projects that actually define needle benito fact i wouldnt place more than three or four down by government is there a danger that nairobi will become or perhaps already has become yet another anonymous city of glass and steel towers that that could frankly be anywhere in the world and unfortunately yes because whats occurred to her of. Which building would you attribute to having some cardinal apart from kerrys who see him make an International Conference and we did reach out some cards or definition the rest just takes its own. Just get their own thing they get their own design and shoot it up and youre not picking the characters and say this isnt a robot youth failed as architects to give the city identity we have not made a conscious do decision to do that and we have not its not driven by an institution its unfortunate but. Its what braves it to the minds of the populace. Ive come to the neighborhood where i lived as a little boy killing money although to be honest i can barely recognize it today with all the construction and traffic and new roads that have come in ive come here to meet someone whos fighting hard to preserve this neighborhood and improve the lives of everyone who lives here. Wriggle houghton has been arrested and suffered Death Threats in his struggles with unscrupulous developers and land grabbers who are looking to cash in on nairobis property boom so is losing his battle to save the citys environment i think yes any attempt to try and keep the city the way it was either in the sixtys or seventys will fail what we have to recognize is the demographic pressure and people coming to the city relentlessly is actually transforming the city so we need a city that is actually able to absorb these large numbers of people but we also need green spaces and we do need recreational spaces and we need the public spaces and we do need Public Utilities to match the private investment thats happening because if you dont have that then essentially we just call it organized chaos and it is the case that you can have a apartment block next to a school next to a petrol station next to a nightclub and sometimes even a garage you know and that thats just doesnt work for many people so i think one of things we need to push for as citizens and as residents. Nairobi is really you know organized planning so that you do have residential areas and clusters of business and clusters of industry but then you dont have all this mingle together but when you land is worth as youve been telling me in literally millions of dollars for small plots around here where im sorry to say it so many officials are corrupt and that seems a very difficult battle to fight the land prices and they really are just crazy i mean we have you know one acre in various parts of the city can be millions and millions of shillings and i think whats happened is that its really gone out of control its height speculative. What you get for the land is not necessarily what the value is but whats happening is people are just thinking vertically right so the first thing they will do when they buy a one acre plot with one bungalow the problem is a Million Pounds is that they will knock down the bungalow and put up a ninety unit property and thats really what you know we have next to me now a ninety unit building that used to be on i bungalow for really about maybe five occupants thats going to be at least. Thats probably about maybe about two hundred fifty people to get two hundred fifty neighbors instead of five nature five neighbors to talk to now ive got two hundred fifty to contend with built by the chinese by the chinese at three percent interest is nairobi a dysfunctional city i mean where where its unplanned and where its not serviced and where there are no utilities waste and sanitation breaks down as weve seen in the last few months you know it is completely dysfunctional weve had cases of cholera outbreaks weve had cases of Noise Pollution i mean killer money is now sadly known for its nightclubs not so much that theyre great nightclubs and im sure for those who are in the my clubs are great but really for the residents who cant sleep at night because you have a twenty four hour a night club booming music or you might have people building for twenty four hours. Well you know we had that i mean this neighbor of ours tried to do this for about a month and then we had to go to the court because of fortune there are laws and bylaws that prevent people from building twenty four hours but the sad thing is that not enough not enough citizens know how to exercise those laws and. Their rights and children be people watching this will say well you know one of these two old timers complaining about this is progress this is development this is nairobi becoming a modern city yeah but we have to remember its our city its not being modernized for anybody else but us and i think whats important is to make it a livable city and make it a city of choice a place where we would choose to live here rather than simply a place we go to work and then one day mystically will return to some ancestral home and go and die there i think we have to say this is our city and we claim it and we do this every day we organize groups of residents to go out and plant trees because were losing the trees and the tree falling is disappearing in the city thats our responsibility not just the governments youre an eloquent well connected person and this is a middle class or in places a very affluent neighborhood is it a realistic model for those enormous slums places like e bay or. For them to try and organize their neighborhoods and fight back against the powers that be in the same way youd be really surprised you when we set up the Community Foundation the money project foundation we. Had the hardest conversations with middle class people and they kept asking why do you need a Community Foundation in this area surely we have everything and what we said to them is the reason you have everything is you privatized everything if we stripped you of your income you wouldnt have reliable sources of energy you wouldnt have electricity you would have reliable sources of water you wouldnt have security youve privatized everything and forgotten that actually these are all Public Services now for the people in my diary and in korogocho and the new. Bring communities of kuber and can worry theyve had to fight for these services and the difference between them and us i think is actually urban poor communities are better organized than urban middle class communities not sounds strange but it is true the level of distance and the level of relatedness gets higher the more affluent you get and i think thats the secret that we need to understand because as we begin to see an end to absolute poverty and people begin to rise up what i feel is missing is the ability to organize across communities and not always thing for middle class communities middle class communities dont fight for anything they simply just pay up when they have a service removed from them. So i think actually in contrast i think in places like my diary and like that youll find that the communities are much stronger theyre much more you know articulate in terms of what they would like to have they may live in situations of poverty but they are very acutely aware that they need to fight for everything the city is vastly bigger than the one that you and i grew up in. Is it a happier and better place i dont know ive not seen any of the Happiness Index is that are done globally but i think you know i think i think nairobi is hard you know its a harsh city to be and the cost of living is is very high the support structures are increasingly becoming less so. Families are becoming more nuclear and in some cases single headed household is led by women mothers is more more becoming the situation so i think were getting smaller in terms of. Our sense of ourselves and increasing people dont fight for anything beyond their compound you know you can have situations where a bar goes up outside your gate and as long as you can get in your gate even if you have to squeeze past the drunkards you still think thats fine and i think thats what we need to transform i think what we need to do you know as a citizen. And also as government is a really give people a sense that really they have a say in this they have a choice in how this goes on the city after all is nobody elses but well thats it from top to aljazeera in the field i hope like me youve got some more about one of africas great cities one of the fillets in nairobi goodbye. A new level of luxury has arrived. An experience that will transform the way you treat. Our Impeccable Service remains but none come breaking. News. The only proof that. The three stooges. Whether conducting business or sharing this with. You the thing still. The feeling that. Someone. Somewhere. 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