Interrogating Competing Tensions among Procedure, Expertise and Local Communities in Public Participation Processes in Urban Renewal in Kenya: The Case of KISIP Project

Abstract Public participation has become a notoriously thorny subject for the state, communities, experts and other actors in Kenya; often exposing a litany of differences among them and slowing down decision-making and project implementation processes. This paper examines state-society, state-statute and statute-society critical junctures of public participation in slum upgrading projects and examines its value proposition to those respective relationships. It explores the normative, procedural and substantive bounds of public participation and investigates potential sources of conflicts. The study considers the justifiably progressive practice of slum upgrading in Kenya as exemplified by the Kenya Informal Slum Upgrading Project (KISIP). This project represents the main contemporary paradigm for slum upgrading which has been attempted in a number of settlements across the country to solve the slum menace. Using elite theory and Sherry Arnstein’s ladder of participation as theoretical models, the study reveals submerged ironies and contradictions in the implementation of public participation in planning, including lack of clarity, exclusion, systemic malfunctions, contradictions, rigidities, insurgencies, differences and interests, and an inherent fear of close engagement with the fundamentals of public participation by both sides. This study ultimately reveals that though hailed as a fundamental right, public participation remains vague and interminably devious, and in need of proper delineation of roles. At the end, the paper recommends an all-inclusive, collaborative model which diminishes tensions between the state and the society and their respective allies, by leveraging statutes as enablers.