Course Description

Course Impact

This hybrid online and offline course is designed to explore and identify creative, informal practices including spaces that facilitate culture and interaction that attempt to overcome fragmentation, poor connectivity and social segregation with consideration to how these might be scaled up to make African cities work better. The course focuses on the Dandora Model Courts as an example of these processes in East Africa.

Dandora is a low income area in Nairobi, Kenya widely known as a dumpsite and characterised by a high crime rate. In 2014, a group of young residents banded together to improve the conditions of the public spaces in Dandora. Dandora’s many apartment blocks are grouped together and form public courtyards (courts), but these courtyards have fallen into disrepair after decades of neglect.  In response, young residents of Mustard Seeds Court, Charles Gachanga, Samuel Ikambi, Abubakar Mope and a few others reclaimed these spaces and began unclogging drains, removing garbage and maintaining green space. Their efforts were so successful that they formed an organization called the Dandora Transformation League and began applying their model court approach to other courts in Dandora. E-learning tools, such as those provided by Eminus, can help replicate the model court success across other informal spaces.

This course will  teach critical planning and design principles, as well as technical skills, within the framework of the New Urban Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals.  Each idea provides the basis for data-informed bottom-up, human-centred urban planning and design to enhance environmental, social, political, and economic sustainability within the city.