Towards Sustainable Urbanization in Kenya: An Exploration of Homa Bay Town Residents’ Attitudes and Practices

.The world is rapidly getting urbanized and towns are becoming important nerve centres for commerce, tourism, education, administration and socio-cultural interaction hubs. Unchecked, unsustainable urban practices can threaten the very existence of the urban settlements. Unsustainable practices such as haphazard dumping of wastes, inequality, ecological pollution, inadequate housing, social conflicts, surges in crime, poor urban transport systems and degradation of environmental quality can rob the urban settlements of their beauty and splendour and instead reduce them to death knells and places of impoverishment. This book explores the less examined factor that will determine sustainability of the urban areas – attitudes and practices. The book explores various aspects of sustainable urbanization and the influence of attitudes on practices towards sustainable urbanization. It provides a rigorous, in depth analysis of linkages between attitudes and practices towards sustainable urbanization and how these varies by knowledge on sustainability, gender, spatial location in an urban area, income levels, and duration of stay in the town among other factors. In the end, the book proposes an integrated model of urban management that takes into account attitudes of residents towards sustainability of the urban area.