Luiz C. Vieira
Assignment 8
1. A description of what you would like to do on your project (what is the question or
questions you would like to answer, the issue you are tackling, etc.)
In my project I would like to explore the use of GIS for slum upgrading in Kibera, a major slum
Nairobi. In the past years several projects intended to improve physical infrastructure of slums
were designed and are now being implemented all over Kenya such as Kensup (UN-Habitat) and
Kisip (World Bank/Ministry of Housing). These projects are a big step towards a better urban
planning in Kenyan cities, particularly in its capital city. However, a certain level of displacement
is expected to happen. I would like to use GIS tools to identify places around Kibera where
displaced populations could be resettled.
2. Provide at least four references in APA citation format that use similar methods and/or
tackle similar issues (at least two of these should come from peer-reviewed journals).
For each reference, briefly describe why you found this reference helpful and how it
may influence your project (or why it isn't useful if that's the case). Do NOT simply copy
the abstract! If you cannot find references of exactly what you are doing, find
references at least in the same general field or one using similar data sets.
1) Cronin, V. and Guthrie P. (2010); “Alternative approaches to slum upgrading in Kibera,
Nairobi”. Urban Design and Planning 164 June 2011 Issue DP2 Pages 129–139 doi:
10.1680/udap.2011.164.2.129
This paper is not a “GIS” paper per se but rather it will give me a good background on how
urban infrastructure upgrading projects are being developed in Kibera and what are the
challenges and opportunities of such projects. I hope it can give me a general idea of what
entails to try to resettle displaced people in an area without infrastructure.
2) Desgroppes, A. and Taupin, S. (2011) “Kibera: The Biggest Slum in Africa?”. IN Institut
Français de Recherche en Afrique “Slum Upgrading Programmes in Nairobi: Challenges in
Implementation” Les Cahiers d’Afrique de l’Est, n° 44
This article provides large quantity of survey data from Kibera that I couldn’t find all in one
place anywhere else. It presents information such as areas of Kibera were people
predominantly live below Kenya’s poverty line, number of people per households and other
data that I might use.
3) Sliuzas, R. V. and Kuffer, M. (2008) “Analysing the spatial heterogeneity of poverty using
remote sensing : typology of poverty areas using selected RS based indicators”. IN Jurgens, C.
Luiz C. Vieira
Assignment 8
(Ed.) Remote sensing : new challenges of high resolution, EARSeL, joint workshop. Bochum,
Germany.
Although this paper does not cover the country or region that I will analyze it provides some
methodological orientations on how to measure poverty, which will probably be important to
understand if I find a data on levels of poverty in Kibera. The results of this paper corroborate
what I suspected and indicate that poverty is not spatially uniform within the selected deprived
wards, and hence demonstrate how data aggregation can hide spatial variation of poverty.
4) Koti, F. and D. Weiner, (2006) “(Re-) defining Peri-Urban Residential Space Using
Participatory GIS in Kenya”. EJISDC 28( 8), 1-12.
This paper is very general and introduces the recent development of GIS use in Kenya and
briefly discusses the use of GIS for understanding quality of life in Athi River town, Kenya. In the
paper, a place-based (re)definition, as they call it, of residential quality of life is achieved by
integrating community local knowledge into a GIS as an information layer. Since I have data
from the Map Kibera project, which somehow is exactly what local knowledge is, this paper
might help me figure out something. The study concludes that GIS in Kenya is being introduced
within an empiricist and positivist epistemological and methodological framework. With more
focus on the visual and quantifiable aspects of the built environment, the perceptions of
disenfranchised peri-urban communities are being excluded, which is what slum upgrading
projects in Kibera must avoid.
3. Describe the methods you think you will use (because we haven't covered all analysis
options in detail yet, this may be very preliminary)
Initially I wanted to analyze the topic of slum upgrading from a tenure security perspective
because the World Bank project Kisip is not properly addressing the issue. But then I realized
that it would be very difficult to find data regarding ownership of land parcels in Kibera. While
doing some research I found out that in order to the upgrading to happen a relatively large
population of Kibera will be displaced and need to be temporarily resettled somewhere, hence I
decided to perform a site suitability analysis for the resettlement of that population.
Alternatively I would like to explore site suitability for new infrastructure in Kibera.
Luiz C. Vieira
Assignment 8
4. List the data layers you will need for this project and where you will acquire them from.
Note: This section of your report should take the form of a table with each data layer
occupying one row.
Data
Roads and Building density of Nairobi
Kibera Health, Education and Transport
Kibera Points of Interest (facilities and
infrastructure)
Kibera Power Lines and Sanitation
Source
Center for Sustainable Urban Development –
Earth Institute | Columbia University
Map Kibera
Open Street Map
Not sure where I will find that shapefile.
Nairobi income per capita per district (or some Probably on Kenya Open Data Initiative
other measure of poverty)
(https://opendata.go.ke/)