UNDERSTANDING HOUSING MARKETS IN URBAN AFRICA

The video is a Drone 3D mesh survey of Pipeline Estate taken on 15th April 2024 for 3x3 Pipeline study.  This was commissioned by SHOUT and conducted by ARQI Solutions, led by the drone specialist and architect, Brian Babu using a Matrice 350 RTK Drone with a Zenmuse P1 camera.

3 x 3 Pipeline is a research project conducted by Center for Affordable Housing Finance (CAHF), Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, GMAURICH Insights and Sustainable Housing Technical group (SHOUT) aimed at understanding the local economy and property market dynamics of tenements, using Pipeline Estate in Nairobi, Kenya, as a case study. The study is a deep dive into the current alignment of interests that enables Pipeline’s built form to exist and thrive and tests whether these interests can be shifted towards better housing outcomes. 

SHOUT’s role as the technical lead involved bringing together technical professionals and tools from the built environment to assess and quantify the gap between what is planned, built, and possible in Pipeline. The emerging insights reveal that the understanding of the real estate fundamentals and economics of tenements is key to finding feasible interventions that could both improve the built conditions without undermining the economics, which are already optimized for the developer and the tenants. This approach moves away from condemning and instead attempts to learn from neighborhoods like Pipeline in order to rethink the urban housing models needed to house a thriving African Urban Workforce.