Jacob Kimaryo Consultancy is a contemporary Swedish consulting firm that offers high quality urban planning services in Sweden and abroad. Services offered are:

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• Comprehensive Planning

• Detailed Planning (Urban Design)

• Applied Urban Research

• Scientific Urban Research

• Evaluation of Urban Development Programs and Projects, and

• Provision of Professional Consultations and Advice

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We also offers regular free critical reviews of recent urban development projects in Sweden, Africa, and rest of the world.

 

Our reviews do not solely focus on the selected projects. We also use the projects as examples for elucidating some current issues or raise some new issues on urban development in the world, as well as identifying good urban development practices that could inspire the creation of good cities in relevant countries.

 

Furthermore, our reviews are sometimes contribution to ongoing intellectual debates related to the selected projects. Countries are not obliged to accept our reviews, but we think they could be useful especially in Africa where many countries are now fully determined to invest billions of dollars in urban development projects geared towards the improvement of the quality of the urban environment. With such large expenditures, every scrutiny of the projects should be important irrespect of where it comes from. Our reviews should be partly seen from this perspective.

 

If you find our reviews useful and you would like us to carry out more detailed evaluation of your urban development projects or plans, please contact us.

 

We have more categories on this website that also concern urban development. All our website's categories are based on scientifically derived data, and are strictly for business promotion purposes and dissemination of urban design and planning knowledge and skills to a wider audience. We believe that those public and private organisations that may be unable to use our consultancy services at the moment due to economic reasons, may find our free knowledge and skills bank provided by our website's categories useful, particularly in the preparation of detailed and comprehensive plans. Our website's categories reflect our commitment and passion for contributing to the creation of good cities worldwide through consultancy and limited philanthropy.

 

Management

The firm is managed by Dr Jacob Kimaryo, an urban planner with many years of professional and managerial experience. The firm has access to a pool of external consultants in urban planning as well as in bordering professions and disciplines including architecture, civil engineering, economics, geography, environmental science, sociology, anthropology, law, and archaeology. We work closely with some major actors in urban development as well as some leading institutions of higher learning in Sweden and elsewhere.

 

Our Mission is to Contribute to the Creation of Good Cities - Cities that are: Beautiful, Convenient, Efficient, Humanistic in Physiological Sense, Safe, Inclusive, and Historically Friendly

Jacob Kimaryo Consultancy thrives to contribute to the creation of cities that are: beautiful, efficient, convenient, humanistic in physiological sense, safe, inclusive, and historically friendly. These are the qualities that Jacob Kimaryo Consultancy considers to be the pillars of good cities. The qualities are usually the dimensions people/observers use as basis for making judgements about goodness of cities. They reflect societal spatial goals or users’ needs and preferences from the built environment. Societal spatial goals are influenced by values, social class, lifestyle, economic situation, technological circumstances, political and administrative systems, and other aspects of society. They are also influenced by the natural environment.

 

Beauty

Beautiful cities are magnets for tourism and investments. There are many examples of cities from all over the world that demonstrate this significance of beauty of cities, e.g. Stockholm (Sweden), Sheffield (UK), Prague (Czech Republic), Vancouver (Canada), etc. Beauty of cities is therefore an important quality for their prosperity.

 

Beauty of cities albeit has some subjective indicators, has nevertheless, many identifiable universal indicators. Within the latter context, it is possible to plan, design and build beautiful cities. And for existing unattractive cities, most have considerable beauty potentials unlocking of which urban planning can greatly contribute. The contribution of urban planning in creating beautiful cities could be, among other ways, through: creative material selection, design, and spatial organisation of urban solids, urban voids, and urban space treatment elements; as well as through creative manipulation of urban spatial forms in relation to natural scenic features like mountains, hills, valleys, lakes, rivers, forests, etc.

 

Jacob Kimaryo Consultancy believe that most unattractive cities are a product of urban design practices that overemphasize the vertical urban plane, i.e. individual building designs and overall skylines while giving too little attention to the horizontal urban plane, i.e. the design and treatment of individual urban spaces such as streets, squares, open spaces, plazas, etc. Such urban design practices also tend to overlook the significance of existing natural features on the quality of urban forms.

 

The need for unlocking beauty potentials of cities in particular, could be argued to be a matter of great importance given the economic benefits that would follow. This may be particularly so in Africa where we think there are many cities which are currently rather unattractive but have tremendous beauty potentials just waiting to be unlocked and trigger prosperity. Jacob Kimaryo Consultancy can assist in identifying such cities/towns and unlocking their beauty potentials. We have our own list of African cities/towns that we think their tremendous beauty potentials are yet to be fully exploited. They include: Freetown (Sierra Leone); Mombasa, Nakuru and Kisumu (Kenya); Dar es Salaam, Moshi, Kigoma/Ujiji, Arusha, Mwanza, Mtwara and Iringa (Tanzania); Bujumbura (Burundi); and Livingstone (Zambia). There are many more.

 

Convenience

Good cities are convenient in terms of: availability of utility services and facilities, collective traffic services, shopping services, medical services, educational facilities, leisure facilities, etc; and physical accessibility to the above mentioned services and facilities; physical accessibility to people and information; etc. This is a classic good urban quality. Urban planning has always been geared towards achieving it. Such urban planning endeavours include: ensuring spatial linkage or what is also referred to as permeability in some quarters; creating fine grained urban spatial forms that are characterised of optimised land uses that are well proportioned and mixed to ensure compatibility as well as meeting the spatial needs of all users; and appropriate treatment/furnishing of urban spaces that are enclosed and well located so that they can support meaningful space use.

 

Efficiency

Efficiency is perhaps the most important urban quality in the modern times. It can be influenced by or overlap with the other types of urban quality. One could argue that if you can achieve 100% efficiency in a city, then you would have achieved most of the other urban qualities as well. It is a progressive and very dynamic urban quality and as such very challenging to achieve.

 

Efficiency of cities is often assessed in terms of: technical, functional, and environmental criteria:

• Technically in terms of let say technical durability of: roads, cyclist and pedestrian ways, storm water drainage systems, sewage disposal systems, water supply systems, buildings, urban space treatment elements, etc; as well as performance of such urban spatial structures.

• Functionally in terms of: availability and accessibility to economic and social facilities and services; and utility of such facilities and services. Functional efficiency can be enhanced by urban planning through land use patterns that cater for all income groups as well as all social and economic activities; prompt supply of buildable land as demanded by property developers and individual builders; etc

• Environmentally in terms of degree of environmental pollution and level of consumption of non-renewable resources. Environmental efficiency can be facilitated by urban planning through let say: land use patterns and traffic circulation systems that support collective transport, cycling and walking; urban solid-void relationships and building design that foster low levels of energy consumption in buildings; etc 

 

Human Physiological Well-Being

Good cities satisfy human needs for physiological well-being. Such needs have been given top priority in the iconic hierarchy of needs by Maslow. They entail needs for food, thermal comfort, clean air, sunlight, water, shelter, etc. According to the Maslow’s hierarchy, these are the most basic needs that must be met in order for a person to progress towards achieving full potential. We will also include here the need for privacy. Although the latter is considered as an independent urban quality in some quarters, it has also been pointed out elsewhere as a need that manifests when people achieve their full potential.

 

Safety

Good cities ensure safety of inhabitants in terms of: personal physical safety and personal social and economic safety.

 

On the one hand, personal physical safety entails safety from crime, e.g. burglary, robbery, rape, etc; as well as safety from accidents, e.g. traffic accidents due to poor traffic circulation systems and poor traffic management. It also entails safety from environmental pollution, e.g. air and noise pollution from: vehicular traffic, industrial waste emissions, household waste, etc; as well as associated health issues. Personal physical safety can be enhanced by urban planning through:

• Spatial organisation of urban solids and voids that supports application of contemporary cctv surveillance systems in urban areas

• Organisation of urban space treatment elements such that there is continuous sight/view within urban spaces and from their surroundings

• Mixed land uses in non-heavy industrial zones that ensure certain percentage of residential use

• Pedestrian and cyclist - led traffic circulation systems and management

• Adoption of administratively based spatial organisation concepts for planning and design of neighbourhoods, like the iconic ten cell unit concept in Tanzania

• Urban space treament that caters for the spatial needs of disabled people, etc

 

On the other hand, personal social and economic safety includes safety from homelessness and unemployment, and can be enhanced by urban planning with the support of national and local authorities through lets say:

• De jure provision of affordable housing and buildable land

• Prompt supply of buildable land and built space for local and foreign investors through efficient development control practice, etc

 

Inclusiveness/Equity

Good cities are inclusive, i.e. they are such that all population groups of society benefit from the cities’ prosperity hence ensuring equity. In other words, good cities will be geared towards de jure provision of goods that are accessible to all their inhabitants. Such goods will include affordable housing, buildable land, sewage and sewarage disposal, clean water, electricity, employment, well furnished urban spaces, educational facilities, medical facilities, sports facilities, police, fire and emergency services, natural resources, etc. Although inclusiveness hence equity may be largely determined by broader national social, economic and local governance policies, urban planning can influence it through adopting participatory approaches and appropriate models for land use patterns. 100% inclusiveness may not be realistic especially in market oriented economic systems. However, good cities will thrive to achieve the highest possible levels of inclusiveness.

 

Historical Spatial Continuity

Finally, good cities ensure historical spatial continuity through protection of buildings, streets, land uses, urban spaces, landscapes, and any other spatial features of cultural significance. In good cities, such features are integrated into implemented urban design as amenities. Because of their regressive nature, needs for historical spatial continuity may conflict with those for efficiency.

 

Our Overall Approach

In providing urban planning services, Jacob Kimaryo Consultancy attaches great importance to the above urban qualities. Particularly, we prepare comprehensive plans and detailed plans that enhance and consolidate these qualities in the urban environment. This is our fundamental guiding principle of our professional urban planning practice. We believe that our position on the significance of the qualities to cities is also shared by most of our prospective clients.