Overview
Morphological transformation is a feature of urban areas all over the world. However, in cities
in the global South, the nature of morphological transformation is profoundly influenced by the
rapid population growth and high urbanization rates currently being experienced (United Nations
Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), 2014; UN DESA, 2015).
A case in point is a city such as Nairobi, which is at the epicentre of a demographic boom. While
Kenya ́s population in 2019 was 47.56 million persons, Nairobi’s share of this population was
about 10% with a population of 4.4 million persons (Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS),
2019). This represents a 40% increase or a growth by 1.26 million persons in a decade. The city also
makes up one-third of Kenya’s urban population (KNBS, 2019). In addition, in 2019, it accounted
for 12% of the country’s households with a total of 1.5 million households (KNBS, 2019).
Principal Investigator
Abstract
In this paper, we investigate the physical manifestation of ongoing urban habitat transformation in the
context of a residential neighbourhood, Kileleshwa, which is located in the western suburbs of Nairobi.
This is done through an analysis of the emergent morphology of the urban habitat by delving into various
levels of urban resolution: the street network, the plots, and the buildings, while tracing the roots of the
neighbourhood in the colonial era and its rapid change in the current millennium. In so doing, the aim
was to understand the degree to which these dimensions had undergone change as a consequence of
the urban transformation. The findings of the paper are that at the different levels – the street, plot, and
building – a variation in transformation has occurred, with a resultant increase in the density of the urban
habitat. This variation is explored in detail at these different levels of the neighbourhood’s urban tissue. In
shedding light on this ongoing transformation, the paper contributes to a deeper understanding of how an
urban habitat has actually transformed, as manifested in its physical outcomes, which have in turn set the
stage for the social transformation of the urban context.
