- He dismissed claims that his plan is to expand the city "as high as you want", noting that there are procedures through which one can get an approval.
- The height restrictions are yet to be removed and the proposal, Sakaja said, is in the County Assembly.
Image: NCCG
The proposal to allow tall buildings in various parts of the city was arrived at after speaking with President William Ruto, Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja has revealed.
Speaking on Citizen TV on Tuesday, Governor Sakaja said he spoke with President Ruto on the expansion of Nairobi in terms of the height of various buildings.
He said they had the talk after the county boss pointed out that Eastleigh area "chocked up" and had traffic delays, due to height restrictions occasioned by the presence of Moi military airbase.
"The reason we have that airbase was to evacuate VVIPs or the President in case of an emergency. I had told him if he tried to use that route, he will get stuck because the place is chocked,"
Sakaja said it was then that he asked Ruto to review the restrictions who engaged experts on the matter.
"He actually thought about it and he engaged his urban experts and they lifted the restrictions there,"Sakaja added.
It was after the move that Sakaja started looking into the other areas of the city, which he says have the ability to expand.
Governor Sakaja however dismissed claims that his plan is to expand the city "as high as you want", noting that there are procedures through which one can get an approval.
"There is an urban planning technical committee," he said.
The height restrictions are yet to be removed and the proposal, Sakaja said, is in the County Assembly.
Sakaja said there will be public participation on the building proposals.
He said most of the challenges that the county government is dealing with are caused by poor planning.
The Governor stated that the last master plans of 1948 and 1976 looked at a city of smaller population that it is today.
He noted that there have been attempts for new master plans, including one which formed the basis upon which localised area plans could be done.
This was supposed to pave way for the localised plans which were tendered by the defuncted Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) including the Woodley area and Embakasi.
The procurement process, he said, however stopped.
"While they did that, there was what we call development control policy that was proposed and that proposal is what is before the County Assembly. We want to prevent urban sprawl," he said.
According to Britannica, urban sprawl is the rapid expansion of the geographic extent of cities and towns, often characterised by low-density residential housing, single-use zoning, and increased reliance on the private automobile for transportation.
Sakaja estimates that there will be about 10.5 million people living in Nairobi by 2050 noting that getting extra land for construction then will be a tall order.