Wilfred Ochieng Omollo

An efficient road network remains among the topical issues in the international urban development forum. This is because roads link interrelated land uses in addition to connecting them with the contiguous metropolitan areas, thus a key contributing factor for an accelerated socio-economic uplift. To sus tain this, planning s tandards that delimit urban road reserves are usually prepared and enforced through development control to ensure that roads are exclusively maintained for their intended purpose.  This s tudy, therefore, through a case s tudy was undertaken in Kisii Town, Kenya inves tigates the extent to which the unauthorized developments on urban road reserves are regulated. It was s teered by the public interes t theory of regulation by targeting residential developments which were proportionately and randomly drawn from the seven residential neighbourhoods. Data were collected using a high-resolution satellite image and a ques tionnaire. Data analysis relied on GIS, t-tes t, logis tic regression, and linear regression. Research findings demons trated a s tatis tically significant difference between the approved physical planning s tandards that are used in regulating road reserves and the extent of compliance by developers. Compliance generally declined by a mean of four metres, signifying that the County Government of Kisii did not undertake adequate development control. Non-compliance was mos tly heightened by the developers’ unawareness of the building plan approval process and that the buildings needed to be inspected during cons truction. This s tudy deepens the international debate on development control by spatially and s tatis tically illuminating how the extent of compliance with the planning s tandards that regulate road reserves may be empirically analyzed.