Nairobi Master Plan (1948)
Core idea
Early East African metropolitan plan
Why it matters
Racially segregated but structurally influential
Description
A master plan for the capital of colonial Kenya prepared in 1948 by a South African-based team led by L. W. Thornton White for the colonial administration, subtitled a plan for a colonial capital. It proposed a zoned metropolitan structure of civic centre, industrial areas, and residential neighbourhoods planned on neighbourhood-unit lines, organised around the railway and a road hierarchy, with residential areas in practice allocated along racial lines to Europeans, Asians and Africans. It guided Nairobi's development through the last colonial decade and into independence.
Significance
The plan is a key document of late colonial planning in Africa, transmitting British postwar techniques into an East African setting while embedding racial segregation in the city's spatial structure. Its zoning and road framework proved durable, and the persistence of its inequalities into post-independence Nairobi has made it central to critiques of colonial planning legacies.
What shaped it
- Zoning (1884 Germany / 1916 NYC)
- The master plan (early 20th c.)
- The British Empire and modern colonialism (1600 – 20th c.)
- The Neighbourhood Unit (1929)
Plans it influenced
- Addis Ababa Structure Plan 2017–2027 (2017)
- Kumasi Structure Plan (2013)
- Nairobi Integrated Urban Dev. Master Plan (NIUPLAN) (2014)
- Harare Master Plan (2019)
Sources
- https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article/47/189/251/9971
- https://openlibrary.org/books/OL19181299M/Nairobi_master_plan_for_a_colonial_capital