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8 January 2009 | One Comment

Kenya, especially Nairobi, has grown from its humble roots. From its small town and small town people into a bigger town with lots of people with big town mentalities.

Big town mentality means that you need to have a car and you need to live in a nice part of Nairobi. Not too long ago, the only badly planned residential areas were to be found in Eastlands, today, take a stroll down Rhapta Road or Riara Road and you will see some of the worst put looking residential areas.

True the houses are in the nice parts of Nairobi, true they are spacious but when you take a step back and look at the neighborhood it might as well be in Eastlands where there was literally no planning and too many buildings in spaces too small to support them.

Now, Corporates in Kenya have started putting up their own buildings everywhere. This in itself isn’t a bad thing especially because what this means is that people like us (small businesses that need low rent offices) but they are going about it completely wrong!

I have just been to a corporate building where there were no more than 50 parking spaces, and how tall is the building? It has 8 floors! Somehow I feel like just the people renting the spaces won’t have enough parking for themselves let alone those visiting them – bring them business that will pay the rent. It is absolutely crazy!

What on earth were the architects thinking? The City Council – since they approved the plans? The corporate that owns the place? Do they suppose that we are earning enough money to cab it everywhere like they do in other major cities around the world? Or that we are ready to give up our newly acquired cars to jump into taxis? Are they kidding?

Someone needs to give this some thought, either cabs reduce their fares or we get paid more or they create parking, but they cannot deny us everything!