The Case of Kenya: Evaluating Kenya Slum Upgrading Program from a Sustainable Urbanization Framework
Date of Award
Spring 5-10-2022
Document Type
Undergraduate Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts and Sciences in International Studies
Organizational Unit
Josef Korbel School of International Studies, International Studies
First Advisor
Singumbe Muyeba
Keywords
Slum upgrading, KENSUP, Kenya Slum Upgrading Program, Kenya slum upgrading, Sustainable urbanization, Sustainable slum upgrading
Abstract
Global urbanization is occurring at an unprecedented rate. The brunt of this urban growth is occurring in the developing world, where cities pose a substantial threat to sustainability. Sustainable urbanization has emerged as an approach to this challenge which balances environmental, social, and economic concerns throughout the urbanization process. Slums pose a threat to sustainable urbanization in the developing world as they result in stalled economic growth, environmental degradation, and increased social inequality. Given the increasing popularity of slum-upgrading interventions, it is critical that such programs be aligned with the core tenets of sustainable urbanization. Unfortunately, there is a lack of existing holistic and replicable tools to evaluate slum-upgrading programs for sustainable urbanization. The ASPIRE Toolkit is a holistic assessment tool designed to evaluate the sustainability of infrastructure projects in developing contexts. The present study employs the ASPIRE Toolkit to evaluate the Kenya Slum Upgrading Program (KENSUP) for urban sustainability. The ASPIRE evaluation conducted in this thesis revealed that KENSUP performs strongly with regards to essential services, social infrastructure, and environmental management; however, the program performs below the standard for inadequate community participation, inequitable distribution of benefits, insufficient government capacities, and economic disturbances. Overall, the ASPIRE toolkit was found to be an effective tool for the assessment of slum upgrading programs and it is recommended that the tool be employed in future research.
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Publication Statement
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Recommended Citation
Contino, Sophia R., "The Case of Kenya: Evaluating Kenya Slum Upgrading Program from a Sustainable Urbanization Framework" (2022). Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals. 11.
https://digitalcommons.du.edu/undergraduate_theses/11