Across Nairobi, elevated highways and flyovers are reshaping urban space and mobility. While these infrastructures prioritise motorised transport, they often create barriers for pedestrians and cyclists. Beneath the expressway, walking, cycling, waiting and trading, continue in spaces that are largely unplanned, unsafe and contested. These conditions reflect broader spatial inequalities, where public land, local ecologies and neighbourhood connections are reconfigured by large-scale infrastructure.

Beneath the Expressway is a collaborative design research project by VE-R (Netherlands), Women Shaping Cities (Kenya) and Critical Mass Nairobi. It focuses on an 8 km corridor between Westlands and Nairobi’s Central Business District of the Nairobi Expressway (above) and Waiyaki Way (below). Phase 1 established a detailed spatial and social understanding of ground-level conditions through mapping, fieldwork and stakeholder engagement. It revealed informal movement patterns, unsafe crossings and fragmented governance, alongside a clear gap between progressive non-motorised transport (NMT) policies and their implementation.

Building on this, Phase 2 shifts from research to action through a design-led, participatory approach. Co-design workshops in Nairobi bring together institutional actors, researchers and everyday users to work with maps, visualisations and intervention tools, therefore, identifying priorities, testing ideas and shaping site-specific proposals.

The project focuses on translating policy into spatial change. It develops proposals at multiple scales: site-specific interventions, corridor-wide guidelines and a flexible toolbox of strategies. These are consolidated into a visual design and recommendations document, serving as both a planning and advocacy tool.

Public engagement is extended through site visits, pop-up events and ongoing digital communication, ensuring wider participation. By combining spatial analysis, co-design and advocacy, the project moves beyond critique towards implementation, laying the groundwork for testing interventions on-site in Phase 3.