Let’s restore Nairobi’s rural landscape beauty

The International Day for Monuments and Sites also known as World Heritage Day is held on April 18 each year with different types of activities, including visits to monuments and heritage sites. In Kenya, the main celebrations will be hosted by the National Museums of Kenya at Thimlich Ohinga World Heritage Site in Migori, South Nyanza.

The theme for this year is ‘Rural Landscapes’, which is linked to the theme of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (Icomos) Scientific Symposium on Rural Heritage to take place in October in Marrakesh.

Icomos defines rural landscapes as “terrestrial and aquatic areas co-produced by human-nature interaction used for the production of food and other renewable natural resources, via agriculture, animal husbandry and pastoralism, fishing and aquaculture, forestry, wild food gathering, hunting, and extraction of other resources, such as salt.’’ Rural landscapes, it adds, are multifunctional resources, adding all rural areas have cultural meanings attached to them by peoples and communities.

For centuries, rural landscapes have maintained a balance between human activity and their environment.

Everyday actions have in some cases resulted in moderate evolution, and in other cases in dramatic transformations due to changes in production methods, technological advances or economic and political changes.

The resulting heritage features evidence from different periods, constituting a rich and complex ensemble of tangible, intangible and living heritage, in which change, transformation and evolution remain ongoing and continue as long as the rural landscape is alive.

While the urban population rate is growing and has reached a global figure of 54.82 percent in 2007, the population of rural areas continues to grow, despite its decline in percentage share.

This has a twofold effect in rural areas and, while some areas are being abandoned, others are suffering from human pressure. Furthermore, we cannot ignore the ecological footprint that urban areas have on rural zones, and the changes in the rural landscapes that this footprint induces, as well as the consequences for both the environment and the communities.

Rural landscapes rely on a delicate balance of the elements and may well be the principal domain in conservation in which communities and participation are the most relevant.

The conservation of rural landscapes puts an emphasis on the relationship between heritage and society, and on the obvious and direct benefits that heritage conservation has not only on the communities that have created, modified and actually bear those rural landscapes, but also on the society whose ecological footprints these landscapes sustain; that is to say the benefits for all of us.(Source: Icomos)

Kenya is blessed with some of the most breathtaking natural countryside in the world.

The beautiful beaches on the Indian Ocean coastline, the open savannah, the great Rift Valley, lakes, rivers, mountains, volcanoes, the deserts in the north, many world heritage sites, lush green landscapes in the highlands, national parks and forests.

These natural features give us a unique footprint and define our heritage.

From an architectural point of view, rural landscape design works to create residential and non-residential areas that are in harmony with their surroundings yet, add usability and functionality where these things were previously limited or non-existent.

Fred L. Olmstead was one of the pioneers in developing what we now know as landscape design. In 1868, he and Calvert Vaux designed an interconnected park system in Buffalo, New York, where city dwellers could go to “refresh and delight the eye, and through the eye, the mind and the spirit.” Olmstead’s park system inspired new landscape designs all over the world and was the forerunner of the Garden City movement of the early 1900s.

In Kenya, we have national and county government planning restrictions which serve to protect natural elements such as rivers and forests, preserve rural spaces, govern future development while maintaining rural sanctity.

We even have a National Environment Management Authority specifically to protect the environment.

Nairobi is experiencing massive urban sprawl which is spilling over to rural landscapes such as Kikuyu, Ruaka, Athi River and Machakos with scant regard for planning, health or environmental laws creating a new generation of monstrous concrete jungles.

Corrupt planning and environmental agencies turn a blind eye as building restrictions are openly violated all in the name of maximising land use and profit.

Public or community participation in development, which is called for under planning legislation, is often ignored or falsified.

A case in point is Ruaka which is bursting at the seams with highrise apartments huddled tightly with no open spaces or recreational facilities.

Some of the new developments towards the Village Market are spewing raw sewage into Ruaka River as there is no main sewer, posing a real health hazard.

There is no semblance of a rural landscape left.

Architecture is supposed to capture not only aesthetic beauty but also form and function bringing together balance in the elements, colour, proportionality and harmony in the fauna and flora of the built environment. Have some of our architects been sucked into the vortex of profit? Where are the artists, the environmentalists, health managers, the nature lovers?

Karura Forest, City Park and the Nairobi National Park are great examples of how rural landscapes can be effectively incorporated into urban planning while retaining our heritage.

These rural landscapes were recognised and conserved more than 100 years ago by the city fathers, creating an environment which is unique to Nairobi.

Like many other aspects of life in Kenya today, the preservation of rural landscapes and our heritage can only be founded in trust and integrity among stakeholders and leaders.