Planning with Reality: Expanding Public Space Planning in Nairobi
MLC Voyager | the GoDown Arts Centre
The GoDown Arts Centre’s innovation is a method that tests whether lived urban realities can be systematically translated into formal planning intelligence through iterative observation, co-creating, and institutional collaboration. The GoDown Arts Centre begin by focusing on the daily users of Dunga road in Nairobi’s Industrial Area, including pedestrians (acknowledging persons with disability), informal traders, commuters, school-going children, boda boda riders, nearby workers, and local businesses in hope that the framework developed will be replicated in other areas. The challenge we are addressing is the mismatch between formal planning systems and lived realties through which urban life is actually organised that results to public-space interventions often failing to respond to actual patterns of use.
Over 3,000 Lives Impacted
The innovation improves public space by ensuring that urban interventions respond to how people actually use streets rather than how they are assumed to use them. Implemented along Dunga Road in Nairobi's Industrial Area, it combines iterative observation, behavioural mapping, co-creation, and live urban experimentation to generate planning intelligence from everyday movement, social interaction, and informal economic activity.
The innovation directly benefits school-going children, persons with disabilities, pedestrians, informal traders, boda boda riders, commuters, nearby workers, local businesses, and other daily street users. By observing how these groups navigate and occupy space, the project develops practical responses such as locating pedestrian crossings along established desire paths or introducing seating where people naturally stop, rest, or interact. The result is a safer, more usable, and more liveable street environment that reflects the realities of its users.
Key milestones include community ownership and stewardship of public installations, collaboration between county departments, road agencies, technical practitioners, and communities, and a formal partnership between The GoDown and Nairobi City County Government. If successful, the innovation will be developed into a repeatable urban learning methodology capable of informing street infrastructure planning and public space development across Nairobi.
The Innovation
The innovation is a community-informed approach to planning and improving public space that translates lived urban realities into practical planning intelligence. It is currently being implemented along Dunga Road in Nairobi's Industrial Area, where it works with daily street users including pedestrians, persons with disabilities, school-going children, informal traders, boda boda riders, commuters, nearby workers, local businesses, city planners, and road agencies.
The innovation addresses the disconnect between formal planning systems and the way streets are actually used. Through observation, co-creation, testing, and continuous learning, it enables infrastructure decisions to be informed by evidence generated with and by the communities that use the space every day. Rather than relying on assumptions or static and sometimes outdated planning standards, the approach builds a shared understanding between communities, planners, and technical agencies of how public space functions in practice.
If successful, the methodology will inform street infrastructure development in other parts of Nairobi while equipping technical officers within Nairobi City County Government and the Kenya Urban Roads Authority with a more adaptive, evidence-based approach to planning that incorporates community-generated intelligence into urban development and decision-making.
About the GoDown Arts Centre
Purpose : To harness culture as a catalyst for inclusive urban transformation by strengthening livelihoods, building social cohesion, and enabling communities to shape the cities in which they live.
Vision : A future where culture is recognised as an essential public good and embedded within the planning, design, and governance of African cities—creating equitable, resilient, and vibrant urban environments in which all people can thrive.
Mission : To work at the intersection of culture, community, and city systems by developing creative infrastructure, strengthening creative livelihoods, advancing community-centred urban practice, and partnering with public institutions to embed culture within planning, public space, and city development. Through collaboration, experimentation, and learning, we create practical models that improve everyday urban life and can be adapted across Nairobi and other African cities.
