Stakeholder Consultation in Luangwa

I went to Luangwa from August 7 - 12 for stakeholder consultation for the Luangwa IDP. It was my first time being there, so I was a bit nervous before going there.

After I got there, though, I fell in love with the small yet beautiful township. It still contained a lot of nature with beautiful scenery as well as some commercial activities such as tourism and fishing. 

Now I feel so proud to be involved in the development projects for the Luangwa District. I cannot wait to go back there sometime soon :)

Luangwa IDP

Recently, I have been working on the Luangwa Integrated Development Plan (IDP) with my coworkers. The IDP is a multidimensional planning approach to fulfill the overall development of the specific area, including physical, social, economic and institutional sectors. This plan will be used to guide the growth, development and management of Luangwa District effectively.

The Luangwa IDP project has started in 2008 but we are still at the second phase of the development (we are actually combining the second phase and the third / last phase, so we are getting close to complete the project). We are really hoping to finish it by the end of this year so that we can focus on the IDP for the remaining districts.

Among those components of the phase 2 (Spatial Development Framework), I focused on the formulation of the spatial development framework. All the three proposals, in detail three kinds of land use maps as well as infrastructure maps, for the IDP were done by the time I started working here. Although I was assigned to write an entire chapter about those proposals by myself, it was not as easy since I was not there when those proposals were made and needed to assume quite a lot of things by examining those maps.

Fortunately, my coworkers were kind enough to help me out and gave me a lot of inputs. So, I managed myself to finish writing the chapter.

Of course I was aware that he write-ups that I did was just a zero draft and needs to be edited. However, I was quite happy that I did something at least to hep develop the district of Luangwa in a long run!

Parceling

My colleagues and I are currently working on parceling subdivisions for LS-MFEZ. Since the land use plan as well as the layout plan for the phase 1 development were done by a consulting company, our department are expected to design the subdivisions only for the phase 2 - 4.

I am enjoying the project fully because the subdivisions that we are recently designing would be built in the real world. So far, we are somewhat done with parceling for the phase 2. We should be able to be done with it soon though (hopefully!).

It, however, requires a lot of patience as we have to keep adjusting the parcels little by little. For instance, it took us about 3 working days to finish parceling for the industrial area just in the phase 3. Because of the task, I am more interested in physical planning per se.

The project is supposed to be done sometime after 2030. I hope to see the economic zone in the real world as soon as possible :)

LS-MFEZ presentation

I needed to give a presentation about the master plan for LS-MFEZ in front of the board members and some stakeholders of the project at the special technical committee meeting today.

As this project needed to be approved by the planning board as soon as possible, my colleagues and I had worked quite hard on preparing for the presentation and creating the GIS maps that were relevant to the topics; development phases, land use, infrastructures and service lines.

It was actually my first presentation that I needed to deliver in Zambia, so I was nervous a bit until this morning. However, since there were some dramas before the meeting, such as no projectors to show the powerpoint slides, the plotter was not working properly to print out 27 maps for the board members, etc, I somehow felt so confident to deliver the presentation. In fact, I enjoyed explaining about the project to the stakeholders who were there at the meeting.

It turned out that people in the meeting liked my presentation as well as my boss and colleagues. They told me that I did good job today and should do another presentation for IDP report when we go on a business trip at the end of this month or early next month. Can't wait :)

Field inspection

I went to a field inspection today with my coworkers.
What we had to do for the field inspection was to explain what planning permission is and to let the home owners apply for it in order to avoid having their houses demolished.
There were quite a few "illegal" buildings without planning permission as the home owners in our jurisdiction would not like to pay for the scrutiny fees.

I was surprised to see that there were so many developments to come in the jurisdiction.
The huge demand in housings and lands are often discussed in the meetings, but I never had thought it was this much.

When I go to grad school, I was thinking of researching about affordable housing in developing countries.
Now, I am more leaning towards land use regulations and sustainable development of land in developing countries.

LS-MFEZ

The project that I am currently working on is for the development of the specific area in Lusaka South.
DPPH and other stakeholders are trying to create the economic zone in the area in order to accelerate the development of the surroundings.
As the area is enormous, there are five phases for the development.

What we have to do now is to create the GIS data for the project so that all the stakeholders can share the information and be on the same page for the project.

Today, we managed to finish making the GIS data for the land use plan of lots in all the phases and that of subdivisions in the phase 1.

After this, we will design all the subdivisions and the land use plan in all the phases.
Although it might be a challenging task to design the subdivisions, I am looking forward to completing the project and seeing all the subdivisions in the real life.

The first field inspection

I went to Ngwerere today for the field inspection for the first time working as a planner in Zambia.

It was for some issues about the privately owned land in Chongwe district.

I was not able to do much but I got to know how we as planners should work in the field.

I will be going to the field inspection starting this week.

I am excited about it already :)

A work as a planner

I have finally started working as a planner for one of the departments at the federal government in Zambia this week.
It has been going great as my colleagues there are really nice and seem to be quite serious about their work as planners.
I am enjoying me work there because they treat me as a expert of urban planning and GIS.
Because of their high expectation, though, I feel the work I have to / am expected to do is quite challenging.
So far, I am in charge of three things; help complete the integrated development plans for the two districts in the province, manage the GIS database for the province, and help the planners the work related to the planning permission.
The job here is exactly what I wanted to do since I always wanted to work as a planner for a government in a developing country.
I am looking forward to working for the department for the next two years.

A life in Zambia

It has been more than a month since I came to Lusaka, Zambia.
I am enjoying my life here so far and am excited to work as a planner for Lusaka Province starting this Tuesday!

The thing that I am enjoying the most in this country is to talk to people here.
People here are generally nice and kind.
Most of them seem to like talking to people on the street.
As soon as they find out that I am Japanese, they start saying something in Japanese, such as konnichiwa, genki deuska, etc.
They also like it a lot when I try to use Nyanja :)

The food here is very good, too.
Their staple food is called nshima.
It looks like mashed potato but is made from ground corn flour instead.
They eat it with meat (chicken, beef, fish, etc) and some vegetables.
So far, I have tried nshima with chicken and fish (bream).
They were awesome!