City of Kigali Advisory Committee Meeting, the necessity for successful urbanisation

The much anticipated third City Advisory Committee Meeting (CAC) took place on 4^th December 2018 where a number of topics and ideas were discussed and shared for the development of the City of Kigali. Opening the meeting, Ms Marie Chantal Rwakazina, the Mayor of the City of Kigali welcomed the board members and added that the City is committed to changing the story of urbanisation in Africa, by planning ahead instead of succumbing to the usual pressures of illegal settlement and congestion. “This advisory board is a good vehicle to ensure the right steps are identified and taken, so it’s up to City Management to implement given advices and recommendations by the Committee ” she remarked

CAC Chair person, Professor Sir Paul Collier emphasised the need to have a city that works; with excellent environment and not congested. He said “a City should be a platform for prosperity for all citizen”

Participants noted that the City of Kigali has been growing fast, and with this growth comes an increased demand for many infrastructures and services to meet the City growing population.

The City of Kigali advisory committee (CAC) was established in 2017 at the request of His Excellence Paul Kagame, President of the Republic of Rwanda to provide advice to the City of Kigali in support of the strategy development, policy and oversee the development of the City of Kigali

The overall methodology of the City advisory committee meeting is participatory and group discussions guided by the Kigali City Development Strategy, its Master Plan under review, National Urbanization and Rural settlement Sector strategic plan for NST 2017-24 and recent studies conducted on the City of Kigali

Some of the previous recommendations made by the Committee

1. Housing/density

It was emphasised that many cities in Africa are urbanising dysfunctional; Kigali needs to do things very differently from peers to avoid their fates. Housing policy has particularly large impacts on city functionality, through its impacts on the city’s density, connectivity, cost of living, liveability, and environmental impact. The City of Kigali is growing at 8% per year and more and more housing would be much needed. The cost of retrofitting the illegal and unplanned housing would be too high and impossible. For a successful housing sector, the Committee recommended that:

-        Priority should be given to ‘sites and services’ provision.

o   Approximately 100,000 people are entering Kigali each year (7-8% population growth), in addition to the backlog housing needing to be replaced. The majority of these people will be low-income. With such needs, it’s difficult for the government to avail funds to build them houses.

o   ‘Sites and services’ comprises of site preparation, plot division (to regularise neighbourhoods), and the laying of basic infrastructure on relative ‘greenfield’.

o   This can go one step further, with incremental building: the developer can provide a wet core (plumbing) and foundations, or even very stripped-down ‘starter homes’ for some highly vulnerable groups, as in successful projects in countries like Brazil and Zimbabwe.

§  However, even providing 20,000 serviced plots per year would keep the city very busy, and would not satisfy demand. There is a need to prioritise, to ‘get ahead of’ demand and stem the proliferation of unplanned settlements.

o   Servicing sites can be self-financing, if plots are sold after servicing. This was the case in Zimbabwe, which piloted this approach with great success. This is the case because i) the value of infrastructure and regularised, formal, plots is typically higher than the cost of delivering these, and ii) smaller plots generally have a higher m² price than larger plots.

o   Various studies and cases show that this approach has significant and long-term positive impacts on the areas developed.

-        For existing unplanned neighbourhoods:

o   Any expropriation and re-housing required could be paid for by the investors who will use the land. This can be the same case for successful Social REITs in Sri Lanka.

o   Making unplanned settlements functional retrospectively is very expensive and generally difficult. This task will become unmanageable as unplanned settlements grow and multiply. Focus on planning and provision for new urban expansion, to ‘get ahead’ of the problem; avert the growth and multiplication of unplanned settlements through sites and services. This task alone is enough to exhaust the City’s human and financial resources.

o   Sites and services projects also support the provision of alternative housing for expropriated households.

-        Kigali should target housing that is both dense and liveable:

o   A density of approximately 100 units per hectare is appropriate for Kigali. This contrasts to both the 32 units per hectare seen in parts of South Africa, and also the 200-300 units per hectare seen in megacities.

o   The key ingredients for density are twofold:  i) small plots, and ii) a higher ratio of floor area to plot size. Zoning regulations demanding the opposite of this in Kigali should be changed with the Masterplan revision.

o   Terraced, narrow (e.g. 4-5m wide) houses with small back yards are a good model for high density with liveability.

§  These can reach up to 2-3 storeys depending on the location.

§  Houses need to feel familiar to Rwandans; people shouldn’t need re-learn how to live in their houses. This speaks in favour of lower buildings and back yards for cooking, drying clothes, etc.

o   No residential buildings should go above five storeys- after which point construction costs becomes much more expensive. The reason commercial buildings sometimes become higher than five stories is for improved connectivity within the building, rather than to save costs.

-        Mass production of houses reduces unit costs dramatically, through economies of scale.

o   However, if led by government, it also brings huge risks- governments almost always fail to understand what residents want and need, leading to empty houses and neighbourhoods, citizens returning to central unplanned settlements, and huge wastage of government finance.

-        Public and green spaces are important for liveability, and also tend to raise land values in surrounding areas.

o   Rwanda has important advantages through its umudugudu and umuganda structures and street cleaners, and strong security; these allow it to properly maintain public and green spaces.

2. Connectivity (Transport)

The productive efficiency of cities derives principally from their connectivity: how quickly and affordably people, as well as goods, services, and information, can move around the city. The connectivity of functional cities reduces firms’ costs of accessing labour and other inputs, and facilitates collaboration and the spread of ideas that is believed to drive sustainable economic growth guided by green principles. To uphold and improve connectivity as Kigali grows, the Advisory Committee gave the following advice:

• Private cars reduce connectivity. The City must find ways to reduce people’s tendency to use private cars, even as incomes rise.
• Public transport should therefore be strongly privileged, especially buses.
• Start with dedicated bus lanes across the city. That technology is appropriate for Kigali’s level of density.
• Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) may be appropriate at later stages, when densities are higher. It suffers two important weakness: i) its routes are not flexible, and ii) it requires very high density catchment areas around BRT stops.
• To support the connectivity of people with disabilities and other vulnerabilities:
• The government can easily legislate for all buses to have disabled access.
• Behavioural ‘nudges’ (such as codes of conducts displayed on buses that include, for example, who should give their seat to whom) tend to be very effective and cheap.
• It is correct that the government maintain the ability to expropriate people, for infrastructure like road widening and other purposes in the public interest. The compensation should be correct, however.
• Compensation should be fair to people, but also to the government, and thus should be decided by competent bodies that understand economics. Judges often misjudge land or property values, so if judges must make these decisions they should be very well educated by economists.
• The Committee advised that the government should acquire land now for future public uses like infrastructure, parks, and public services, before prices rise.

-        With well-planned streets, pedestrians and cars can co-exist

-        The Committee encouraged Kigali’s planners to take a ‘street-level view’ of the city when making street plans. For example, major streets should be lined by store fronts, not office entrances. Office firms may want frontage on a main road for prestige, but this does not serve the city or even bring many benefits to the firm; access through a more minor side-road is adequate.

3. Planning and Institutional Capacity

-        No planner can understand in advance the full potential of the city and all its diverse neighbourhoods. There is a need to plan for places instead of a single development/ building in order to create an integrated urban environment with good/selective and local made construction materials.

-        The City Masterplan should be a working documents, not static a map. It should be revised regularly.

o   This was particularly emphasised by Djoko Prihanto, whose firm Surbana authored the Kigali Masterplan. Other Committee members agreed and welcomed the comments.

-        The main masterplan document can provide the skeleton, but detailed plans for specific blocks should be made on an ongoing and flexible basis, taking account of applications coming in. These applications help to reveal promising uses of the land, and suitable characteristics for the neighbourhood (reflecting Rwandan culture and heritage).

-        Equipping the One Stop Centre (OSC) to deliver the city envisioned is key: all planning approvals are made by the OSC, and their responsibility for flexibly planning city blocks and approving projects requires considerable numbers and expertise of staff.

o   The City needs a team of thinkers. City officials noted that its current team are totally occupied by managing urgent files and construction application, so cannot plan ahead to prevent problems, and be creative, to deliver a flourishing city.

o   To finance the resources needed to properly equip the OSC, fees should be commensurate to the projects proposed (which means much higher).

Professor Collier noted that his Cities That Work initiative can support capacity-building in the City, by providing policy papers and other tools on key issues, as well as executive training.