- Efficient Urbanisation: Leveraging the City for Sustainability   click here to open paper content231 kb
by    Cerere, Njeri | cerere@gmail.com   click here to send an email to the auther(s) of this paper
Short Outline
East Africa is one of the fastest urbanising regions in the world and is
home to vast natural resources. This paper explores the opportunities
presented by urbanisation and regional cooperation in sustainable
management and creation of cities.
Abstract
East Africa is one of the fastest urbanising regions in the world and home
to vast natural resources. In the developing world, urbanisation brings the
promise of economic growth and development and along with it the threat of
environmental degradation and socio-economic disparities. This inspires
apprehension rather than anticipation in the developing world as rapid,
unchecked, and unplanned urbanisation evolves as a precursor to the urban
population predicted by current trends. Sprawl around cities and along
emerging infrastructure grids coupled with lack of plans at regional,
national and local levels imposes encroachment and the spill over effects
of human activity into wildlife habitats, wetlands, forests and other
environmentally valuable and sensitive areas. There also exist
opportunities presented by well planned, efficient urbanisation mechanisms
including:
• Integrating and coordinating planning infrastructure, investment
and land use plans on regional, national and local levels
• Anticipating density in cities and managing sprawl beforehand by
implementing efficient urban growth tools and incentives
• Incorporating environmentally sustainable measures into future land
use plans to transform and preserve outlying areas as urbanisation occurs
• Activating the city’s potential as economic engines for growth and
development to create opportunities that foster social sustainability
• Leveraging the city’s opportunities for durable competitive
advantage to effectively channel investment
• Promoting liveable urban spaces by including the green agenda into
current planning and building practices

Efficient planning, investment and development have the potential to manage
and reverse the negative impacts of unplanned rapid urbanisation. Current
lessons and best practices from Latin America and Asia indicate that
planning ahead to accommodate and cater for this explosive growth in cities
is preferable to attempts at implementing urban upgrading systems and
structures after the fact.
Keywords
sustainable development, liveability, regional development
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