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!