TITLE:
Spatial Planning for Climate Resilience: A 35-Year Time Series Analysis of Mukuru Special Planning Area, Nairobi
AUTHORS:
Victor Nyakundi, Munala Gerryshom, Mugwima Njuguna
KEYWORDS:
Climate Resilience, GIS-Remote Sensing, Mukuru Special Planning Area, Nairobi, Spatial Planning, Urban Vulnerability
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Climate Change,
Vol.14 No.4,
December
8,
2025
ABSTRACT: Informal settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa are at high risk of exposure due to climate-related hazards, attributed to rapid urbanization and poor infrastructural development. This paper will give a geospatial and qualitative evaluation of the Mukuru Special Planning Area (SPA) in Nairobi in a 35-year period (1990-2025) and how the spatial planning interventions affect climate resilience. The analysis with the help of weighted overlay models, supervised land-cover classification, change detection algorithms, NDVI trend analysis, and GIS-based vulnerability mapping is based on a multi-temporal data set of 11 Landsat scenes, five high-resolution aerial images, and 35 years of hydro-meteorological data. Findings show that impervious surface cover turned high (64.2% in 2025) with a rapid rise in impervious surface cover (18.6% in 1990 and then higher in 2025) whereas vegetative cover (NDVI > 0.3) reduced by 48.5% indicating massive degradation of the ecosystem. The area prone to floods grew by 33 percent and the average surface runoff intensity increased between 0.42 and 0.71 (normalized index). This study concludes with evidence-based recommendations for spatially targeted inclusive planning, infrastructure retrofitting, and green space restoration to improve adaptive capacity and reduce hazard exposure in high-density informal urban environments.