The Bubonic plague, also known as Black Death, ravaged Nairobi in a 4-year period that inadvertently influenced how housing estates were built in the city.In 1902, a number of mysterious deaths occurred on the busy Indian Bazaar street in young Nairobi.The plague that was described as one of nature’s most lethal killer diseases, claimed 20 lives prompting the colonial masters to prohibit Kenyans from living in Nairobi.Although welcomed and allowed to work in the growing town, Kenyans were still not permitted to permanently dwell or settle within Nairobi. Indian Bazaar in Nairobi.File This fear was partly based on plague outbreaks in the lower-class railway housing and the Indian Bazaar in 1900, 1902, and 1904. Despite the fact that there was no housing available and no intention to provide this for the locals, Nairobi’s colonial elite did tolerate Africans setting up spontaneously-built peripheral settlements such as Kibera, Pumwani and Pangani on Nairobi’s outskirtsDoctor Rosendo Ayres Ribeiro (Portuguese) is credited with having identified the potential health hazard, with his actions believed to have saved countless lives.He is said to have known about the plague due to his experience in a previous outbreak in India. The doctor noticed similar symptoms while attending to two Somali patients, and alerted the relevant authorities at the time.The colonial government ordered a containment strategy in which everyone was evacuated from the Indian Bazaar, and the city’s first modern trade hub was set ablaze. Early Government Road in Nairobi.File Following the near-miss, the construction of railway workers’ housing set a precedent to separate its population by class.High-class railway officers were located west of Nairobi River and station on dryer, less swampy ground, while an estate for lower-class – initially Indian – workers was realized east of the station, on the lower ground near the Nairobi River. The latter was known and mapped as Coolies Landhies. In the years that followed, Nairobi began to evolve from a railway to a business town, prompted among others by the East African Protectorate Headquarters’ move to Nairobi in1905.By 1920, Nairobi’s population counted 12,000 locals, more than half of the town’s total, which would grow to 18,000 in 1926.Evolving the ideas of designing an urban community for native citizens, Nairobi Municipality began to seriously experiment with the international dispersed garden city model from the late 1930s onwards. Shauri Moyo estate (1938) was the first breakaway from the landhie typology, containing local facilities (shops, schools).This effort was only firstly and fully realized in the Ziwani (1939–1942) and Starehe (1942–1946) estates and afterward concluded in the ‘model’ settlement Kaloleni (1943–1948).Recently, the Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) announced its grand Improvement Project in which some of Nairobi’s oldest estates are set to undergo a complete makeover.Some 1,100 hectares have been earmarked for the project in the pioneer estates of Kaloleni, Mbotela, Shauri Moyo, Bahati, Kariokor, Ziwani, Uhuru, and Jericho. Nairobi Metropolitan Director-General Mohammed BadiFile
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