Council

• Place names, along with other urban symbols, were used as a tool of control over space in many African countries during the colonial period.
• This strategy was epitomised by the British, who applied it in Nairobi and other parts of Kenya from the late 1800s.
• Spatially, colonial street names dominated the central part of the city, while African names were used mainly in the peripheral residential neighbourhoods.
• In early colonial Nairobi, the population was composed mainly of three groups: British, Asians and indigenous Africans.

1. Street numbering of railway depot and campsite

• However, it soon became a permanent settlement, with the construction of the railway station and residential quarters for railway officers, subordinate workers and Indian labourers (who resided in Coolie Landhies).
• In the 1899 Uganda Railway Plan for Staff Quarters obtained from the Nairobi Railway Museum, the only roads in with actual names were Station and Workshop roads.
• The street numbering pointed to the functionality of the railway campsite.

2. A claim to city pioneership

• The top colonial administrator in Kenya was known as a commissioner which was later replaced by the title governor.
• The first British administrator was Arthur Henry Hardinge, between 1895 and 1900.
• Streets named after other “pioneers” included Sadler (now Koinange Street), Elliot (now Wabera Street) and Hardinge (now Kimathi Street).
• Africans were relegated to mere manual labour and temporary residence in the city.

3. Street names to honour the British political order

• Later, a street was named Connaught Road in their honour.
• This led to renaming of many streets after royals, for example Princess Elizabeth Way, Victoria Street, Kingsway and Queensway in Nairobi.
• Laragh Larsen, a geographer, highlights the linkage between royal power, political and economic power in the “re-placing” of urban symbols.

4. Place names to recreate a ‘British home’

• A major impetus of the colonial officials for naming places in Nairobi was to create a home away from home.
• Some of those names have endured on the urban landscape of Nairobi: Hurlingham, Lavington, Riverside, Spring Valley, Westlands, Parklands and Highridge, among others.

Conclusion

If there’s anything Kenya could learn, it is that a naming landscape should showcase unity in diversity. Streets should honour not just the political elite, but other personalities and events that make up society.