Qualitative analysis of land use change pressures, conditions and drivers in rural-urban fringes: A case of Nairobi rural-urban fringe, Kenya

Abstract

This paper is grounded on the truism that the planet’s future is urban. However, urban growth process is bringing rapid economic, social and physical changes. These changes are bringing rapid transformations in areas concerned, especially on land uses in rural-urban fringes. While this is happening, the pressures and drivers are not well documented and understood, particularly so for rural-urban fringes in developing countries such as Kenya. This paper is based on a qualitative research approach and used Nairobi rural-urban fringe as a case study in its attempt to document and analyse pressures and drivers of land use changes. The paper concludes that land use changes are contingent upon many pressures and drivers, primary of which is population increase through natural growth and immigration. The process that produces population growth is however a subset of the structuration processes that produces land use changes in the rural-urban fringe. In suggesting ways of reconciling the likely to emerge multiple perspectives and differences in managing rural-urban fringes, the paper observes that there are always sufficient points of intersection to support dialogue and collaboration. However, this requires a strategy that looks for intersections among different positioning and rationalities and enters into a dialogue at such situated moments is needed. This entails going beyond scientific or technical forms of knowledge to involve emotional sensitivity and judgment, practical wisdom, ethics and deliberation that touches on values with reference to praxis.