Kuyo Ojal, Mark; (2025) Disaster Risk Creation in Nairobi, Kenya: Influence of Institutional-Actor Relationships. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Urban growth, much of which is anticipated in Sub-Saharan Africa, presents a time-limited opportunity to build widespread transformative adaptation and resilience into urban development planning and decision-making, effectively addressing both development and risk issues. However, this opportunity is constrained by limited knowledge, financial and institutional capacities, and weak governance at the city level, impeding effective management of rapid urban growth and risk reduction. This study aimed to investigate the relationships between institutions and actors that contribute to disaster risk creation in Nairobi, and considers the implications for advancing foresightful, risk-sensitive, and inclusive pro-poor urban development. It examines how disaster risk is actively produced through urban development decision-making processes in contexts of institutional complexity and messiness. In doing so, it unpacks how actors, institutions, and power dynamics interact to shape urban development decision-making spaces and resultant urban trajectories, and how these processes influence new inputs. At the same time, the thesis engages with the transformative aim of foresightful, risk-sensitive and inclusive, pro-poor urban development, highlighting how extant decision-making environments often exclude the urban poor and thereby contribute to the disaster risk creation. The objectives of the study are to: identify the dominant voices shaping Nairobi’s evolving urbanity; examine how institutional pluralism constrains the opportunity to break cycles of risk creation and explore the opening for urban development policy so that it supports the transformative aim of foresightful, risk-sensitive and inclusive, pro-poor urban development. Drawing on institutional bricolage, African urbanism, and urban risk scholarship, the study employs a qualitative approach to explore the dynamics and social relationships shaping Nairobi's urban development decision-making and implementation spaces and resultant urban trajectories. The methodology includes document analysis, 44 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with over 46 national and city-level policy actors from various sectors, community actors from an urban poor settlement, and field notes. This thesis is one of the first to apply institutional bricolage in empirical urban research, offering novel theoretical contributions and advancing discussions on institutional bricolage, urban transformation, as well as who owns the city. To guide these theoretical contributions, the following questions are answered: How do processes of institutional bricolage occur in urban development decision-making and action? Who are the bricoleurs? What are the characteristics of transformative urban practices, and finally what enables longer-term urban transformation? The findings link varying levels of vulnerability, exposure, and capacity to break cycles of risk creation and accumulation to the multiplicity of city visions and actors and their limited coordination power. The thesis reveals how the capture of decision-making by powerful bricoleurs across levels constrains local actors' agency in shaping their urban futures, and negotiating acceptable risk, and choosing their preferred adaptation actions. It highlights how project-bound decision-making spaces and distrust redefine national and city-level actors’ relationships, limiting sustainable transformation opportunities. Further, it reveals how inclusive, people-centric decision-making spaces create openings for new understandings of risk and safe spaces for DRR or adaptation actions. The findings show that top-down politics heavily influence urban transformation. However, they also reveal that transformative institutional processes and physical transformation do not align well, inhibiting large-scale transformation that is sustainable. The study seeks to advance theory and influence policy and practice.

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