Since 2006, the Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) has worked with residents and community-based organizations across Nairobi’s flood-prone Kibera informal settlement to co-design and manage a network of multi-use productive public spaces. The first eleven of these projects include community centers, schools, sanitation facilities as well as interventions promoting flood resilience and environmental restoration.

KDI’s approach includes novel, even radical, methods for engaging community expertise and strengthening local governance control. This account is based on more than twenty interviews with KDI staff, local partners, other NGO staff, and academic researchers, as well as field visits and reviews of academic literature and popular and social media in English and Kiswahili. Collectively, the eleven projects engage all aspects of equitable resilience, since they variously contribute to improving environmental conditions while contributing to social welfare, creating livelihood opportunities and financial stability, and increasing community safety.