Kisumu

Kisumu’s relationship with Lake Victoria is central to its current planning agenda. The city’s Integrated Strategic Urban Development Plan identified the lakefront as a special planning area, where former railway and industrial land creates both a barrier between the centre and the water and an opportunity for a more compact extension of the central business district.

UN-Habitat’s lakefront work proposes mixed uses, a stronger public-space network and better connections between the existing street grid and the shore. The objective is not simply waterfront redevelopment: it is to redirect growth toward serviced, connected urban land and reduce low-density outward expansion. Kisumu’s lake edge therefore operates as infrastructure, public realm and development land within a broader strategy for the city’s spatial structure.