Urbanisation in Kenya has a long history with urban agglomeration in the form of trading centres being found along the Kenyan coast as early as the 9th Century AD (Obudho 1988: 3) . However, the growth of many urban centres can be traced to the pre-independence period when they were used as centres of administrative and political control by the colonial authorities (UNCHS 1985). Table 1.0 shows that the process of urbanisation in Kenya, which had been rapid in the 1979-1989 period, seems to be declining. The proportion of Kenyans living in urban centres1 increased from 5.1 per cent in 1948 to 15.1 per cent in 1979, to 18.0 per cent in 1989 and 34.8 per cent in 2000. There are currently 194 urban centres, with 45 per cent of the urban population residing in Nairobi (GOK 1996:35; GOK 1989:74;GOK 2001).