Discuss urban planning with your children, thank me later
PSV vehicles and passengers at Green Park terminus during a test run on June 18, 2021 conducted by Nairobi Metropolitan Services.
This week, everyone in the policy world was summoned to the city of Katowice to discuss how to help Mother Nature take care of those living in urban areas.
It couldn’t have come at a better time when cities are wondering why others handled Covid-19 lockdowns better than those who were whipping their citizens into staying indoors with no spaces to exhale. I’m happy to report that were the translation devices here not travelling at the speed of light, the Kenyan delegation would’ve killed these people with English of the nose.
Take your children to school, you people. School is good, let no one lie to you. Out here, serious countries are grooming their best brainboxes and sending them to the world to go fight for their national pride while back home some young MP aspirant is cursing his party for saving him the embarrassment of going to bite his tongue in Parliament.
The next time a politician lies to you that education is useless, ask them why their kids are in ivy-league universities learning from the world’s best when yours is floating in village rafts begging crocodiles not to eat them on their way to school.
I have newfound respect for those who studied urban planning in Kenya. Your course might be bereft of the rigour that your global peers are taken through, but you don’t need a translating device to convert urban planning jargon into Kenya shillings, and that sets you apart from almost everyone I met here.
Social tensions
For those who’ve been asking what career their children should pursue if the government allows them to grow up, seven in 10 people will be living in urban areas by 2050 and the Kenya Police will need help in dealing with the social tensions that will arise from the government leaving them in the hands of God.
It means children in urban areas will need more schools to go test the patience of overwhelmed teachers, since their parents won’t be migrating with their village bathrooms made from banana leaves with spaces for snakes to lick scented soap and cool their bodies from the chasing heat brought about by village witchdoctors.
Cities are discussing how to design buildings with natural plants inside to balance the carbon we emit with the oxygen they give us. This is what MCAs in other countries have come here to learn more about so that the next time they’re debating whether they should give licences to those intending to grab our green spaces, they’ll remember that no amount of bribes can change the mind of Mother Nature to punish those who ask for it.
I’ve also learnt that highrise buildings alone aren’t the mark of civilisation and if we aren’t shaping our cities with the right environment-friendly infrastructure, climate change will boil us back to walking naked like our fossilised ancestors and that will put us into problems with our mothers-in-law, who aren’t allowed by culture to imagine that we have hairy chests.
People living with disabilities also came here to ask for military support in their war with urban planners. They want an end to a charity-based approach to urban design that directs those using wheelchairs to report to the scrap metal desk first. Contrary to popular belief, people with disabilities are capable of working for their own food and architects have been asked to stop sketching urban designs that resemble a begging bowl.
Urban resilience is the ability of an urban area to adapt and grow no matter what chronic stresses and acute shocks they’re taken through. When you look at Nairobi in its current makeup, do you think it can withstand a three-day nonstop heavenly wash without most of its estates floating like the Noah’s Ark? Don’t raise your hands to tell me the answer, as our guests are still around.
