When Walking Becomes a Battle: Mobility Challenges in Dhaka and Nairobi's Informal Cities

The study reveals that in informal settlements of Nairobi and Dhaka, walking is a daily struggle marked by unsafe, neglected environments, severely impacting livelihoods and social participation. It calls for urgent, community-driven reforms to make walking safe, dignified, and central to sustainable urban development.

Walking is celebrated around the world as a cornerstone of sustainable cities, public health, and climate action. Yet in the informal settlements of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Nairobi, Kenya, walking is not a choice; it is a difficult necessity shaped by systemic neglect. Researchers from the University of Manchester, the University of Nairobi, Arizona State University, the University of Asia Pacific, and the Department of Regional and Urban Planning at the University of Nairobi embarked on a groundbreaking study to capture the lived experiences of those who walk out of survival, not preference. Their research shows that for millions, walking is a dangerous, exhausting ordeal rather than a healthy, liberating activity.

Through participatory methods, walking audits, collaborative mapping, and in-depth focus group discussions, the researchers exposed the day-to-day mobility struggles in two sprawling settlements: Mukuru Kwa Njenga and Korail. In these places, footpaths are often nothing more than treacherous dirt tracks strewn with garbage, prone to flooding, and lined with precarious makeshift bridges. The built environment offers no dignity to walkers; instead, it punishes them, particularly women, children, elderly people, and those living with disabilities. Walking here is not the joyous, eco-friendly activity that policymakers envision, it is a daily battle against a hostile and hazardous landscape.

Mobility Justice: Who Gets to Move Freely?

At the heart of the research lies a question of mobility justice: who has the right to move safely and freely within a city? The study frames walking in informal settlements as an issue of profound inequality, shaped by deep-rooted power imbalances and urban planning paradigms that favor motorization. In Nairobi and Dhaka, city authorities largely neglect the needs of low-income walkers. Policies promoting non-motorized transport focus on central business districts and main roads, but rarely extend to the informal settlements where the majority of daily walking occurs.

In Mukuru Kwa Njenga, despite the introduction of participatory slum upgrading initiatives like the Kenya Informal Settlements Improvement Project, residents remain skeptical. Experience has taught them that upgrading often leads to displacement rather than empowerment. Meanwhile, in Korail, residents continue to build and maintain their own informal pathways and bamboo bridges, even as they endure the consequences of poor drainage, flooding, and fire hazards. In both cities, walking infrastructure is missing, ad hoc, or built informally by the residents themselves, testaments to resilience, but also to governmental neglect.

Walking for Survival: Livelihoods and Lost Opportunities

Mobility is not simply about moving from place to place; it is about survival and opportunity. In both settlements, walking is the lifeline that connects residents to livelihoods, markets, healthcare, and education. Yet poor walking environments drastically curtail these opportunities. Residents described how arduous and unsafe journeys severely limit their employment options, especially for women who bear the additional burden of domestic responsibilities. Many are trapped in low-paid informal jobs located within or near their settlements, unable to venture further due to unsafe walking conditions or unaffordable transport costs.

Children’s education suffers similarly. In Mukuru and Korail, children often attend poorly equipped informal schools within the settlements because reaching better schools further away requires unsafe and lengthy journeys. During the rainy season, these problems intensify dramatically. Flooded pathways and collapsed bridges isolate entire neighborhoods, with devastating impacts on school attendance, health access, and economic productivity. Stories of people unable to leave their homes for days, suffering infections from prolonged water exposure, and missing crucial work opportunities are common across both communities.

Unsafe Paths: Conflict, Hazards, and Fear

The everyday act of walking in these informal settlements is fraught with conflict and danger. In both Mukuru and Korail, pedestrians must constantly negotiate narrow, obstructed pathways shared with motorcycles, carts, and occasional small vehicles. In Nairobi’s Mukuru, footpaths are often reduced to single-file spaces squeezed between informal housing units and roadside businesses, forcing people to walk on the dangerous roadway itself. In Korail, the main access roads lack sidewalks altogether, leaving pedestrians to jostle with rickshaws and motorbikes.

Flooding, poor waste management, broken surfaces, and an absence of formal crossings or traffic controls exacerbate these risks. Residents identified a host of hazards: slippery surfaces, stagnant water, speeding vehicles, and personal security threats, especially at night when unlit streets create a breeding ground for crime. Young people, particularly teenage girls, are vulnerable to harassment and violence. In Mukuru, relations with police are fraught, with young residents often unfairly profiled as criminals simply for walking after dark. Community-led safety efforts in Korail have helped somewhat, but the overall sense of insecurity persists.

Toward a New Vision: Walking with Dignity

The researchers’ message is clear: achieving sustainable, inclusive cities will remain a fantasy unless the mobility realities of informal settlement residents are addressed. The study calls for an urgent paradigm shift, one that places walking at the center of urban development strategies rather than treating it as an afterthought. Infrastructure upgrades must go beyond building roads for cars and must integrate basic services like drainage, lighting, and waste collection to ensure that walking is safe, accessible, and dignified.

More importantly, these changes must be designed with the communities themselves, building on the creativity and resilience residents have already shown in adapting their environments. Residents of Mukuru and Korail have demonstrated that they know best where and how walking infrastructure is needed; they simply need planners and policymakers to listen and to act. Mobility is not a luxury, it is a human right. Only by recognizing the struggles and aspirations of walking communities can cities hope to deliver on the promise of sustainable development and urban justice.