As new theories and proposals for planning and urban design evolve, we are increasingly aware of “preemptive” urban interventions that can restrict or limit future growth. Instead, new planning strategies must work towards encouraging an architecture that is limitless in its capacity for use and reuse and pronounced in its greater urban potential. Recognizing the developmental promise of this type of design is arguably the most effective way of inducing a substantive and enduring change in contracting communities, and latent within proposals of all scales ought to be an aggressive pursuit for the discovery of the emergence potential in both form and program.

In the diagrams below, sites are identified as promising intervention zones in Nairobi, both equidistant from the downtown, and Dandori (the continent’s largest garbage dump). If an effective program is embodied in sustainable structure in the prescribed zones, these areas will become engaged by both formal and informal urban activity, and could induce a convectional form of development, potentially aiding in the enfranchisement of the marginalized slum districts within the city.