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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Cities
Sec. Urban Resource Management
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsc.2025.1544486
A novel cost estimation model for the urban regeneration of a slum: the case of Kibera (Nairobi)
Provisionally accepted- Department of Civil Engineering, University of Salerno, Fisciano (SA), Italy
Today, about one billion people worldwide reside in slums and informal settlements, which show extreme poverty and social inequality. Implementing well-structured strategies and programmes to make these settlements safer and more sustainable for residents is a challenge for governments. Therefore, it is crucial to define models to accurately predict the costs of intervention and assess the economic feasibility of slum upgrading actions.The aim of this paper is first to define possible intervention scenarios for the informal city and then to characterise an innovative model for the rapid estimation of related construction costs. The model, based on a synthetic-comparative evaluation procedure, allows estimating the urban regeneration costs of a slum according to the intervention scenario, which is differentiated into minimal, barely satisfactory, and fully satisfactory levels. This provides economic actors and policy makers with the essential financial terms to determine the resources to be allocated to support slums.The model is applied to the case study of Kibera (Nairobi), one of the most challenged slums in the world. The results provide a measure of the transformation costs per capita. These costs turn out to be insignificant compared to the expected economic and social benefits in the long run.
Keywords: Slum, informal city, urban regeneration, Economic model, Cost estimation
Received: 12 Dec 2024; Accepted: 18 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Nesticò, Russo, Maselli and Vietri. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Gabriella Maselli, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Salerno, Fisciano (SA), Italy
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