the syrian observatory for human rights says the explosion appeared to target the headquarters of an opposition faction. well that attack took place as syrian government forces and their allies continued their advance to recant recapture it live province from the rebels schools thousands of civilians to flee towards the border with turkey in freezing winter conditions it is the largest remaining rebel held territory in syria the former white house chief strategist steve bannon is trying to make amends with the us president you reaffirmed his support for donald trump in a statement after becoming the main source for a damaging book about trump's presidency trump continues to denounce the foreign fury book as the lies it was written by journalist michael wolff and thirty two people are missing in the east china sea after an oil tanker collided with a cargo ship and caught fire this happened off the coast of shanghai search teams are looking for the missing sailors from iran and bangladesh who work for an

iranian shipping company rescue a save the twenty one crew the other ship involved as you headlines talk charges there is next. welcome to talk to al jazeera in the field with me barnaby phillips in the kenyan capital nairobi now this is a city that has played a big part in my life i spent some very happy childhood years here is i have vivid memories of although i left when i was only ten years old way back in one thousand nine hundred seventy eight i've returned for reporting stint for al-jazeera and

it's fascinating for me personally to see the changes nairobi is undergoing these possible. changes in some cases for the better and in some cases for the world to help me understand nairobi's journey i've been talking to some experts kenyans of my generation who can help explain where this city has come from and where it might be going. in the one nine hundred seventy s. kenya was celebrated as an african success story newly independent politically stable economically strong nairobi it's proud but it was caught between two identities narrow view was founded by the british and that colonial influence was still strong but it was trying to redefine itself as a modern african city in the seventy's just like today it was a place of inequality a few lived well most struggle to survive. but the fundamental change between the

nairobi i knew as a boy and the city of today is one of. eyes the population has grown eight hundred percent a small manageable city has become a vast metropolis right my first stop was at the downtown arts complex run by joy boyer she's a woman of many talents actor singer architect and defender of nairobi's heritage. now in the one nine hundred seventy s. kenya was a defacto one party state few dead question president joe miller kenyatta. today it's a multi-party democracy so i wanted joy to tell me if nairobi's artists now have more freedom of expression since our sort of multi-party elections and particularly two thousand and two we in the cultural sector began to notice a shift we saw a younger generation sort of pick up the baton so to speak from previous artists

and be bolder in terms of the themes that they were tackling with with music with the spoken word we saw a new art forms emerging contemporary dance you know sort of sprang into the scene and then of course now with the sort of digital age we're seeing a lot more younger people picking up cameras and and expressing and sharing through through those media as well so yes so definitely a much a much more exciting space i know that sort of fifteen years ago in a visitor would come to nairobi and sort of say to us what what can we go and see we kind of had to stretch our you know sort of minds a little bit and say well we point them to disappoint them to that but now the city is full of something to do every single day that's connected to the so it's actually very very vibrant as the city preserved its history during that time as it preserved what might have been good about the early independence is quite i don't know i mean being my age and sort of seeing the looking at generation now that you know we sort of say the kenyan population average age nineteen

a very young population one of the things that i think is missing is a disconnect a lack of continuity between the p. . before and now so that when you're looking at an understanding of history if you're looking at a connection between those who are the so-called movers and shakers in any of our sectors then and now there is little knowledge little continuity of that sort of understanding between between the generations which i think is a pity because that surely is the big changes and did a city of half a million has become a city of what four and a half the out front of it maybe five it some people tell me that's right that's an incredible change in in such a short period of time absolutely absolutely i think if you walk around the city today of course road works construction densification you know sort of spaces that maybe you know if you were in this city thirty years ago you probably would have found a lot of open green spaces a lot of those are gone but i think the interesting and exciting thing is that

there is an understanding within the city planning offices themselves now around sort of moving forward in creating a sustainable healthy city and so we have been fortunate enough to be part of those conversations of trying to think about how do we invent or eyes the public spaces reclaim them and make them in a spaces that the public can now use make a city that is sort of concerned around walkability livability do we have too many cars yes of course we do how do we sort of encourage people to cycle how do we sort of say there's nothing wrong with walking. begin to think about a public transport system that is not choked by many many many little more tattoos that you sort of have something that's a bit more you know kind of coherent and systematic so these are things that these are things that we actually be discussing now and i think that is important you sound like a bold visionary but you also sound like someone who's who's very optimistic when i think about the demographic pressures when i think about i'm sorry to say how this

city in this country is associated with corruption is anyone listening to you when you talk about cycle paths or restoring parks in the city. center in the years yes i mean i think that always there are some individuals who are within these spaces within public space government who are open minded and who are looking ahead and i know that certainly the individuals who are currently sitting in them in the nairobi urban planning department are very open minded a very proactive very visionary be honest with me here if nairobi and of the nineteen sixty's or seventy's could be transplanted into the city twenty seventeen would they be horrified or would they be proud of what had happened here i think they'd be horrified to some extent i think because i think that there's a lot of. planned development that has that has taken place. if you look at the city some parts of the city are actually very very filthy garbage collection

incomplete road. construction that's actually not been planned properly so yes i think that they'd be horrified if it were your biggest regrets personally of opportunities nairobi might have missed since independence. i think i think that you know just the. the planning i think that that was a missed opportunity i think that we we inherited a city that of course was a colonial city. and we had a chance to begin to think about how do we sort of become urban africans if i can sort of phrase it that way and what sort of african city if they such a thing do we want to be in i think we didn't have that conversation i think that of course there were other pressing things we worrying about education we were worrying about industry we were going about the economy but we were not thinking about these things in the way that we now think about them that the urban infrastructure or any sort of infrastructure that you're putting down of course is coherent with all of the other things that you're planning and so now i think we're

realizing that that holistic approach which we are beginning to to adopt was something that we probably should have looked at really early on and the end effects effects a clear effects a clear i can recall from from the seventy's certainly that my kenyan friends if you ask them where they're from they never really said nairobi they said i'm could do you i'm from mount kenya i'm luhan from consumer or wherever they were from. if i ask young kenyans today who do people think they are nairobi and to they think of themselves as nairobi and i don't think so i think that the majority don't actually know that sense of identity is still business it's a work in progress you know because i know that about you know sort of half a decade ago we started a conversation around nairobi identity and of course we it was very clear to us that many of us do not see ourselves as nairobi ensnare ruby and nairobi still the place where we come from where we come from school will probably raise our families

to a certain extent here and then we will go and retire somewhere else but there is still the generation now that is born here and that actually has now we could ties with the so called rural base and that is for me the beginning of that nairobi and and one of the things that i'm keen to see is how do they sort of take ownership of the space as their spaces their home how do they engage with it how do they participate in making it the sort of city that they would like it to be the story of nairobi is in many ways i suppose a typical story of a post-independence african city. incredible demographic growth. enormous wealth for some but terrible inequalities as well who would you agree with that absolutely absolutely and it's clear i mean in fact when you look at the city of course the city was the segregated city before independence and you can see the effects of segregation but now religion white areas absolutely there is absolutely

there is absolutely that doesn't exist that doesn't exist so much in that sense you now see it more as an economic segregation so you see that the eastern part of the city is where you probably have the lower income groups. really congested tight development unplanned development over there and then he sort of have the other part of the city the western part of the city which were then you know the former white neighborhoods where again there is you know sort of a densification of structure. but more pleasant spaces to live in and actually people who are economically well off so the city is yes definitely segregated along economic lines many people in the city are struggling to earn a livelihood many people are employed in the city so it is not a city that is. what is a welcoming city a comfortable city for for the newcomer. and yet it is a city that the newcomer continues to flock to from from all over kenya why everybody's hopeful i think thinking that they will probably be the lucky one to get a job or to be or to be able to start something

a small business or you know whether it's selling bananas by the roadside or fixing a car or being a cobbler with everything i think everybody thinks that there is enough of a population enough of an opportunity and i think the other thing that we saw just in our discussions around identity was that the city's a space that allows you to in a sense cut ties from from tradition and heritage you can remake yourself and i think that a number of young people probably find that the that the city is a space where they can remake themselves they can imagine themselves to be something else but of course they then also find that it's not automatic it's very hard and it can be quite disillusioning. let's look forward ten years. what would you most like to change in nairobi to make this a better city for the millions of people who live in one of mine ten years time and ten years is a really short time but one of the things that i hope we would have is is just dealing with the transport you know i don't live very far away from where i work on a good day it would probably take me about fifteen eighteen minutes when i leave

here at six o'clock trying to head home it could take me an hour it could take me on a half so the congestion on the roads it's just the that planning of urban transportation i think is absolutely critical but then i think the other thing that i hope would happen with sort of infrastructure development is also just a sense of civic engagement and pride in who we are as nairobi and you know how do we how does it how do how do our governess sort of instill promote and encourage that sort of sense of being a proud nairobi in a narrow being who engages in a ruby who asks and i rubin who participates i'm hoping that in ten years time it'll be a different arab you know people say i'm a proud nairobi and. now robi is fast becoming a high rise city toll buildings springing up all over the place but is the city losing its identity during this process i've been talking to one of nairobi's leading critics. charles care who or has watched and participated in nairobi

strives for nation does he see any call to duty with the city of the one nine hundred seventy s. they call him he has changed the population has changed the port difference because into meanly there been a zation so many things have changed that that never abuse certainly wouldn't be there a lot of the a bit of it is the bit of the the specter of nairobi that is the agreement so we don't feel but infrastructurally we've got a totally different city and that process of change if anything seems to be accelerating in recent years it's actually what you call it it's it changes year on year on year out narrow b. ten years ago is a totally different era b. from the narrow be ten years prior to that and if you actually move it a little short and there will be in five years changes a lot in two years ten years a lot. of the infrastructure definition of roads in the last five years alone in the city of nairobi is so much that

a person who was here five years ago would actually need a gated to it to get there we are a giant roads that did not exist overpasses we have underpasses we have dual carriageways that didn't exist we have four lanes on the roads if you go to the law in committee as neighborhoods as well within a year you actually need a gave it to her to get to where you were going that's how repeated the transformation he's in arabic because even slum areas are growing very very quickly essentially so they're also growing their own definition on the roads the growth of need most of it is driven by the demand for housing the demand for commodities and a demand for business enterprises so you look at the slum areas they're going to grow these. astronomical in terms of populous so that population has to be accommodated look at the middle income areas the same same kind of thing you look at the car my shoe areas they demand for commercial space and has actually. braves the demand for infrastructure definition all these incredible skyscrapers which

have gone up and which are still going up and i gather even more of planned in the coming years higher and higher where's the money coming from is easy kenyan money or is it international money pouring into this city this a lot of kenyan money a lot of it does a lot of international money from international investors international establishment who have established themselves your leg banks. insurance companies you'll find them defaming a lot of their shoe enterprise visit a lot of partnerships especially within the commercial sector with respect to retail outlets ok so that that brings a lot of external money to local money most of the residential development is actually internal money and very least the least the lowest developer least investor in terms of development in this country is government because apart from the infrastructure the roads and the release and other route infrastructures his

terms government hasn't done many serious projects that actually define needle benito fact i wouldn't place more than three or four done by government is there a danger that nairobi will become or perhaps already has become yet another anonymous city of glass and steel towers that that could frankly be anywhere in the world and unfortunately yes. because what's occurred to her of. which building would you attribute to having some character apart from kerry's to see him make an international conference and we did reach out some courage to a definition the rest just takes its own shit. just get their own thing they get their own design and shoot it up and you're not picking the characters and say this isn't a robot youth failed as architects to give the city identity we have not made a conscious decision to do that and we are not driven by an institution it's

unfortunate but. it's what braves it to the minds of the populace. i've come to the neighborhood where i lived as a little boy killing money although to be honest i can barely recognize it today with all the construction and traffic and new roads that have come in i've come here to meet someone who is fighting hard to preserve this neighborhood and improve the lives of everyone who lives here. has been arrested and suffered death threats in his struggles with scrupulous developers and land grabbers who are looking to cash in on nairobi's property. so is losing his battle to save the city's environment i think yes any attempt to try and keep the city the way it was either in the sixty's or the seventy's will fail what we have to recognize is the demographic pressure and people coming to the city relentlessly transforming the city so we need a city that is actually able to absorb these large numbers of people but we also

need green spaces and we do need recreational spaces and we need the public spaces and we do need public utilities to match the private investment that's happening because if you don't have that then essentially we just call it organized chaos and it is the case that you can have a apartment block next to a school next to a petrol station next to a nightclub and sometimes even a garage you know and that that's just doesn't work for many people so i think one of things. we need to push for as citizens and as residents of nairobi is really you know organized planning so that you do have residential areas and clusters of business and clusters of industry but that you don't have all this mingle together but when you land is worth as you've been telling me in literally millions of dollars for small plots around here where i'm sorry to say that so many officials are corrupt. that seems a very difficult battle to fight the land prices and they really are just crazy i mean we have you know one acre in various parts of the city can be millions and

millions of shillings and i think what's happened is that it's really gone out of control it's highly speculative. what you get for the land is not necessarily what the value is but what's happening is people are just thinking vertically right so the first thing they'll do when they buy a one acre plot with one bungalow the problem is a million pounds is that they will knock down the bungalow and put up a ninety unit property and that's really what you know we have next to me now a ninety unit building that used to be on a bungalow for really about maybe five occupants that's going to be at least. that's probably about maybe about two hundred fifty people to get two hundred fifty neighbors instead of five nations so you saw five neighbors to talk to now i've got two hundred fifty to contend with built by the chinese go by the chinese at three percent interest is nairobi a dysfunctional city i mean where where it's unplanned and where it's not serviced

and where there are no utilities waste and sanitation breaks down as we've seen in the last few months you know it is completely dysfunctional we've had cases of cholera outbreaks we've had cases of noise pollution i mean killer money is now science sadly known for its nightclubs not so much that they're great nightclubs and i'm sure for those who are in the my clubs are great but really for the residents who can't sleep at night because you have a twenty four hour a night club. music or you might have people building for twenty four hours well you know we had that i mean this neighbor of ours tried to do this for about a month and then we had to go to the court because a fortune there are laws and by laws that prevent you from building twenty four hours but the sad thing is that not enough not enough citizens know how to exercise those laws and exercise their rights. people watching this will say well you know one of these two old timers complaining about just this is progress this is development this is nairobi becoming

a modern city yeah but we have to remember it's our city it's not being modernized for anybody else but us and i think what's important is to make it a livable city and make it a city of choice a place where we would choose to live here rather than simply a place me go to work and then one day mystically will return to some ancestral home and go and die there i think we have to say this is our city and we claim it and we do this you know every day we organize groups of residents to garden plant trees because we're losing the trees and the tree folly is disappearing in the city that's our responsibility not just the governments you're an eloquent well connected person and this is a middle class or in places a very affluent neighborhood is it a realistic model for those enormous slums places like the barrier. for them to try and organize their neighborhoods and fight back against the powers that be in the same way you'd be really surprised you when we set up the community foundation the money project foundation we. had the hardest conversations with middle class people

and they kept asking why do you need a community foundation in this area surely we have everything and what we said to them is the reason you have everything is you privatized everything if we stripped you of your income you wouldn't have reliable sources of energy you wouldn't have electricity you would have reliable sources of water you wouldn't have security you privatized everything and forgotten that actually these are all public services. now for the people in my diary and in korea washoe and the neighboring communities of kuber and khan worried they've had to fight for these services and the difference between them and us i think is actually urban poor communities are better organized than urban middle class communities not sounds strange but it is true the level of distance and the level of relatedness gets higher the more affluent you get and i think that's the secret that we need to understand because as we begin to see an end to absolute poverty and people begin to rise up what i

feel is missing is the ability to organize across communities and that's always sing for middle class communities middle class communities don't fight for anything they simply just pay up when they have a service removed from them so i think actually in contrast i think in places like my diary and like that you'll find that the communities are much stronger they're much more you know articulate in terms of what they would like to have they may live in situations of poverty but they are very acutely aware that they need to fight for everything the city is vastly bigger than the one that you and i grew up in. is it a happier a better place i don't know i've not seen any of the happiness index is that are done globally but i think you know i think i think nairobi is hard you know it's a harsh city to be and the cost of living is is very high the support structures are increasingly becoming less so. families are becoming more nuclear and in some

cases single headed household is led by women mothers is more more becoming the situation so i think we're getting smaller in terms of. our sense of ourselves and increasing people don't fight for anything beyond their compounds you know you can have situations where a bar goes up outside your gate and as long as you can get a new gig even if you have to squeeze past the drunkard's you still think that's fine and i think that's what we need to transform i do. what we need to do you know as citizens and also as government is really give people a sense that really they have a say in this they have a choice in how this goes and the city after all is nobody else's but ours well that's it from talk to al jazeera in the field i hope like me you've got some more about one of africa's great cities one of the phillips in nairobi good buy.

january. african heads of state and government. for the state of the african union where the goals. seventeen met. with brand new episodes updating some of the best documentaries from over the years the biggest names in politics in business will meet in the swiss alps for the world economic forum what will be talk of the agenda. engages in rigorous debate cutting through the headlines on the front and in a week of special coverage will be gauging reaction from around the world to america's most controversial president of modern times january.

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about working for al-jazeera is that even as a camera woman i get to have so much and put in contribution to a story i feel we cover this region better than anyone else would be what it is you know it's very trying to be but in the particular because you have a lot of people that are people you did on political issues we are we the people believed to tell the real story so i'll just mend it used to deliver in-depth journalism we don't feel inferior to the audience across the globe. hello i'm maryam namazie in london harry a top stories on al-jazeera nigeria has started flying thousands of its citizens home from libya where they've been trapped in slavery like conditions just large numbers of nigerians are stuck in libya had been trying to cross to italy by sea but was stopped by a local on factions and libya's coast guard.