Urban Land Management and Housing Informality in Kenya: A Case of Eldoret Urban Area
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.2200/aerj.v4i2.170Keywords:
Urban Land Management, Transportation costs, Value Capture, Housing informality, property taxAbstract
The informality in housing generally tends to complicate the urban land management in many cities of the world. Urban land management aims at the provision of affordable urban land in sufficient quantities and also aims at guiding the growth of cities and ensuring their efficient functioning. Eldoret Urban Area, is the previous Eldoret Municipality, established by the colonial government as an urban center in 1908 and as per the population census of 2009, has a population of 497,446. It has been growing at 6% and is one of the significant urban centers in the North-Rift in terms of industrial, academic, administration and business development. This study used The Becker and Selod (2009), dual- market framework model of urban economic theory to informality. This model emphasis that different levels of risk aversion or other differences among households would be a sufficient but not necessary condition for the two markets (i.e. formal and informal) to co-exist. The urban economic models- The Brueckner and Selod (2009), make assumptions that are at odds with the reality in most developing world cities. The model also assumed all land is fully serviced and that the rental market is complete. However, the housing strategies of significant segment of the urban population in developing countries violate many of these conditions. Economics models of the informal housing markets assume implicitly or explicitly; the residents can afford to live in the formal market but stay in informal settlements for institutional reasons (such as community ties, inertia and lower risk aversion) or for purely opportunistic reasons. Urban Residents that are unable to bid competitively in formal markets use variety of strategies to gain housing occupying areas not open to formal markets for instant, environmentally protected zone occupying areas not yet urbanized, thereby saving on the serving costs transferred by developers; crowding into existing buildings and building progressively overlong period. To overcome the negative consequences of housing informality and to ensure appropriate management of urban land management, this paper tends to explores the applications of traditional policy approaches to informality, which aims at increasing the capacity of low income families to pay for housing, while also holding down the prices of housing and serviced land. The key policy alternatives considered under this discussion are; transportation costs as a substitute credit system; the property tax as a planning tool and using value capture to fund urban services. In conclusion, it is true that informality is a problem of land market management that urban economic theory has yet to explain, if the urban households both poor and rich to be provided with affordable and quality housing in our cities.
References
Acioly Jr, C. (2007). The Challenge of Slum Formation. Bell, M. and Bowman, J. (2002) “Property Taxes in South Africa- Challenges in the Post- Apartheid Era.” Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Biderman, C., Hiromoto, M. H., & Ramos, F. R. (2018). The Brazilian Housing Program Minha Casa Minha Vida: Effect on Urban Sprawl. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.. Blanco, C. and Kobayashi, H. (2009) ‘Urban transformation in slum districts through public space generation and cable transportation at north-eastern area: Medellín, Colombia’, The Journal of International Social Research, 2 (8), pp. 75-90
Boakye, E. A. (1994). Land Accessibility for Housing the Urban Poor in Less Developed Countries in Africa: The Zambia Experience, Paper Submitted To The Second International Symposium on Housing for the Urban Poor, Birmingham, United Kingdom, April 1994.
Brand, P. and Dávila, J. (2011) Mobility innovation at the urban margins: Medellín’s Metrocables, City 15, pp. 647-661
Brown-Luthango, M. (2006) “Capturing unearned value/leakages to assist markets to work for the poor”. Position Paper 5, Prepared by Development Action Group for Urban Landmark, for the Urban Land Seminar, Ingwenya Country Escape, Mulders drift, South Africa.
Bujang, A. A., Zarin, H. A. and Jumadi, N. (2010). The relationship between demographic factors and housing affordability. Malaysian Journal of Real Estate, 5(1), 49-58.
Cerdá, M., Morenoff, J. D., Hansen, B. B., Tessari Hicks, K. J., Duque, L. F., Restrepo, A. and Diez-Roux, A. V. (2012). Reducing violence by transforming neighborhoods: a natural experiment in Medellín, Colombia. American journal of epidemiology, 175(10), 1045-1053.
Chowdhury, M. Z. S. (2013). The housing affordability problems of the middle- & low- income groups in Dhaka: A policy environment analysis (Thesis). University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
Cronbach, L. J. (1951). Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests. psychometrika, 16(3), 297-334.
Devas, N. and Rakodi, C. (eds) (1993). Managing Fast Growing Cities, New Approaches to Urban Planning and Management in Developing World: Longman Group UK Limited, Harlow, Essex. Ed. J.J. Basinski, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Dodson, J. (2005). Is there a spatial mismatch between housing affordability & employment? Opportunity in Melbourne? AHURI Final Report No. 80, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute Limited, Melbourne. Retrieved from https://www.ahuri.edu.au/research/final- reports/80 Ellickson, R. C. (1977). Suburban growth controls: An economic and legal analysis. The Yale Law Journal, 86(3), 385-511.
Gliem, J. A. and Gliem, R. R. (2003). Calculating, interpreting, and reporting Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient for Likert-type scales. Midwest Research-to-Practice Conference in Adult, Continuing, and Community
Education.
Goytia, C., de Mendoza, C. and Pasquini, R. (2010). Land regulation in the urban agglomerates of Argentina and its relationship with households’ residential tenure condition. Documento de trabajo no. WP10CC1. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, MA.
Guan, M. (2012). How to affect housing values: Location, affordability & amenity. African Journal of Business Management, 6(16), 5593-5598.
Habitat, U. N. (2006). State of the World’s Cities 2006/7. New York: United Nations, 292. Hassan M. A., Hamdan H., Jamalunlaili A., & Abdullah Y. A., (2018). Housing and Transport Expenditure: An Assessment of Location Housing Affordability. Planning Malaysia: Journal of the Malaysian Institute of Planners. Volume 16 Issue 2 (2018), Page 99 - 108
IBGE (2000). Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics). 1991 and 2000. http://www.ibge.gov.br/home
Jain, R. and Brecher, C. (2014). Housing affordability versus location affordability: The rent’s too damn high! But the Metrocard is a pretty good deal.
Jewkes, M. D. and Delgadillo, L. M. (2010).Weaknesses of housing affordability indices used by practitioners. Journal of Financial Counseling and Planning, 21(1).
Kathuria, O. P. (1959). Some Aspects of Successive Sampling in Multistage Designs.
Lee Pugalis, Bob Giddings and Kelechi Anyigor (2014). 'Informal Settlements: The Prevalence of and Barriers to Entrepreneurial Synergies in Slum Communities', Enterprising Places: Leadership and Governance Networks (Contemporary Issues in Entrepreneurship Research, Volume 3). Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp. 197-225
Lipman, B. J. (2006). A heavy load: The combined housing & transportation burdens
of working families.
Litman, T. (2014). Transportation affordability: Evaluation and improvement strategies. Victoria Transport Policy Institute.
Litman, T. D. (2012): Evaluating Accessibility for Transportation Planning. Measuring People’s Ability to Reach Desired Goods and Activities. Victoria Transport Policy Institute.
Majale, M. M. (2002). Tenure regularization in Informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya. Urban land management in Africa, 267-283.
Mallach, A. F. (2009). The case for affordable housing. Planning, 75(3), 31-36.
Mattingly, K. and Morrissey, J. (2014). Housing & transport expenditure: Socio-spatial indicators of affordability in Auckland. Cities, 38, 69-83.
McAuslan, P. (2003). The International Development Act, 2002: Benign Imperialism or a Missed Opportunity.
Muchima (2004). Housing Finance. Bank of Zambia and Ministry of Finance and National Planning Seminar, Lusaka
Mugenda, O. M. and Mugenda, A. G. (1999). Research methods: Quantitative and qualitative approaches. Acts press.
Obudho, R. A. (1997). Nairobi: National capital and regional hub. The urban challenge in Africa: Growth and management of its large cities, 292-334.
Orodho, A. J. (2003). Essentials of educational and social science research methods. Nairobi: masola publishers, 54, 71-82.
Osman, M. M., Yusof, S. W. M., Shuid, S. and Abdullah, M. F. (2017d). Housing affordability index for districts in Perak. Advanced Science Letters, 23(7), 6049-6052.
Pugalis, L., Giddings, B. and Anyigor, K. (2014). Reappraising the World Bank responses to rapid urbanisation: Slum improvements in Nigeria. Local Economy, 29(4-5), 519-540.
Quiqley, J. M. and Raphael, S. (2004). Is Housing Unaffordable? Why Isn’t It More Affordable? Journal of Economic Perspectives 18, 191- 214.
Sabri, S., Ludin, A. N. M. and Johar, F. (2013). Assessment of neighborhood affordability based on housing & transportation costs in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Planning Malaysia, 2, 75-100.
Sani, N. M. (2013). Residual Income Measure of housing Affordability. International Journal of Advances in Engineering & Technology, 5(2), 1-8.
Schilderman, T. and Lowe, L. (2002). Developing appropriate housing standards and procedures. Building Sustainable Urban Settlements: Approaches and Case Studies in the Developing World. London: ITDG Publishing.
Sekaran, U. and Bougie, R. (2016). Research methods for business: A skill building approach. John Wiley & Sons.
Smith, C. (2019). Land concentration and long- run development: Evidence from the frontier united states. MIT Working Paper.
Smolka, M. O. and Larangeira, A. D. A. (2008). Informality and Poverty in. The New Global Frontier: Urbanization, Poverty and Environment in the 21st Century, 99.
Streimikiene, D. (2015). Quality of life and housing. International Journal of Information and Education Technology, 5(2), 140-145.
Streimikiene, D. (2015). Quality of life and housing. International Journal of Information and Education Technology, 5(2), 140.
Syagga, P. M., Mitullah, W. V. and Gitau, S. K. (2001). Nairobi Situation Analysis. Government of Kenya and UNCHS Collaborative Nairobi Slum Upgrading Initiative, Nairobi.
Turner, B. A. (1976). The organizational and interorganizational development of disasters.
Administrative science quarterly, 378-397.
Turner, J. F. C. and Fichter, R. (1938). Freedom to build: Dweller control of the housing process. New york: The Macmillan Company
UNCHS (1997). Monitoring Human Settlement with Urban Indicators (Nairobi, United NationsCenter for Human Settlement (HABITAT))
UNCHS (1988). Shelter: a model for the preparation of shelter strategies, (Nairobi, The Finnish International Development Agency and UNCHS United Nations Human Settlements Programme
(UN-HABITAT) (2011). Innovative Land and Property Taxation. ISBN Number (Volume): 978-92-1-132407-5
United Nations Human Settlements Programme Staff (2003). The challenge of slums: global report on human settlements, 2003. UN-HABITAT.
Whitehead, P. G, Jin, L., Macadam, I, Janes, T.,Sarkar, S., Roda, H. J., Sinha, R. and Nicholls, R. J. (2018). Modelling impacts of climate change and socio-economic change on the Ganga, Brahmaputra, Meghna, Hooghly and Mahanadi River systems in India and Bangladesh. Science of the Total Environment, 636, 1362-1372.
Whitehead, C. M. E. (1991). From need to affordability: An analysis of UK housing objectives. Urban Studies, 28, 871-887.
World Bank (201 7). World Development Indicators 2017. Washington, D.C: World Bank. Retrieved December 28, 2019 from https://openknowledge. worldbank.org/handle/10986/26447
Yusoff, Z. M., Adnan, N. A. and Rasam, R. A. (2014, August). Affordability Index for Low- Cost Housing Location-Distribution Procedure. In Arte-Polis 5 Intl Conference – Reflections on Creativity: Public Engagement and the Making of Place. August 8-9, 2014, Bandung, Indonesia.
Zyed, Z. A. S. B. (2014). Assessment of Housing affordability problems among younger working Households in Greater Kuala Lumpur (Doctoral dissertation). University Malaya, Malaysia.
