Does Kampala Need Another Mall at City Square?

Does Kampala need another mall at City Square? We examine the proposed commercial development and what it could mean for Kampala’s public green space and urban landscape.

There are some urban-development proposals that make you stop and ask a very simple question: Why?

The latest proposal to transform the historical two acres of Kampala's City Square, present day Constitutional Square, into an “eco-friendly” real estate complex containing a hotel, shopping mall and other commercial facilities is one of them.

And in this case, we need to ask not only why, but why now? Cities are getting hotter, while contemporary urban design is placing increasing emphasis on trees, vegetation and green infrastructure to make dense urban environments more liveable. Yet here we are, contemplating the removal of one of the few significant patches of green left in the heart of Kampala.

We are trying to make our cities greener, and yet here we are, wanting to delete the little patch of green we have left.

On August 30, President Yoweri Museveni directed the Minister for Kampala Capital City and Metropolitan Affairs, Minsa Kabanda, to study businessman Hajj Hassan Bulwadda's proposal, consult the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) and report back. The proposal, submitted on August 18, describes a modern complex incorporating solar power.

There is nothing wrong with investment. There is nothing inherently wrong with hotels, shopping centres or modern commercial buildings. Kampala City needs investment and it needs good buildings.

But does every piece of valuable urban land need to be converted into commercial real estate?

And more specifically: What exactly is Kampala short of, another shopping mall, or the things that shopping malls cannot provide?

Kampala's concrete jungle needs breathing space

Anyone who regularly moves through Kampala's central business district knows what the city has become: concrete, glass, asphalt, traffic and increasingly dense commercial development.

In that environment, City Square is different.

It is a patch of landscape in the middle of all that development. The mature trees around it and the established planting within the square provide a visual and environmental break from the built-up city.

It is not simply an empty plot but part of the urban fabric. And that distinction matters.

And once that landscape is replaced by a hotel and shopping mall, it is gone.

Where would Kampala get another one?

That is the question that should precede any discussion of its commercial value.

Satellite Map of Kampala City Square aka Constitution Square

“Eco-friendly” does not answer the land-use question

The proposal has been described as modern and eco-friendly, with solar power among its features. That sounds attractive.

But we need to separate two very different questions.

Can a commercial building be environmentally efficient? Absolutely.

Does making a commercial development environmentally efficient automatically make it appropriate for that particular site? No.

A solar-powered shopping mall is still a shopping mall.

Green technology can reduce the environmental footprint of a building; and in fact, it should be standard practice in our hotter cities now. However, it cannot, by itself, compensate for the loss of an irreplaceable urban open space.

So we should ask:

Would this proposal still be considered a good idea if the words “eco-friendly” and “solar-powered” were removed from it?

If the answer is no, then we are perhaps being distracted by the technology from the more fundamental planning question.

Haven't we done this before?

There is another reason this proposal deserves particularly careful scrutiny.

This is not the first time commercial development has been proposed for City Square.

In 2001, businessman Hassan Basajjabalaba paid a premium for the land with a plan to redevelop it into a modern shopping mall. The proposal generated opposition from MPs and the then Local Government minister, Jaberi Bidandi Ssali, and ultimately did not proceed.

A later account by Daily Monitor also documented an earlier attempt to put commercial development on the square, while research into Kampala's urban politics identifies Constitution Square as an important example of the city's struggles over public land and commercial development.

There is therefore an almost surreal quality to finding ourselves discussing essentially the same proposition again, more than two decades later.

And this raises a question that deserves an answer:

What has changed?

Kampala certainly has.

But has the case for building a shopping mall on City Square actually become stronger?

Or has the opposite actually happened?

Kampala has more commercial space. It has less green space.

When earlier commercial proposals were being considered, Kampala did not have anything like today's inventory of shopping malls and large commercial developments.

Today, shopping centres are already an established part of the city's commercial landscape.

What has become increasingly scarce is open green space.

That changes the economics of preservation.

A piece of land becomes more valuable to the city not only because of what can be built on it, but also because of what cannot easily be replaced once it is gone.

You can build another shopping centre.

You can build another hotel.

You can build another office block.

But you cannot simply decide next year that Kampala needs another mature urban green space and manufacture 30-year-old trees.

The question then becomes, what would Kampala be gaining by developing City Square; and what would it permanently lose?

That should be the calculation.

The Sheraton grounds make the point

Kampala has other sizeable green grounds, including the grounds around the Kampala Sheraton.

But much of that space is effectively separated from ordinary public life by fencing and controlled access.

That makes City Square even more significant in the city's landscape.

Kampala's remaining open spaces should not all be viewed through the same commercial lens.

Some have value because they are recreation grounds.

Some have ceremonial value.

Some have historical value.

Some provide ecological or environmental functions.

And some simply give a densely built city somewhere to breathe.

City Square does several of these things at once.

This is also a heritage question

There is another complication that cannot simply be brushed aside.

Constitution Square was formally declared a Historical Monument in 2007 under the Historical Monuments framework.

That does not necessarily mean that no development or modification could ever take place there. But it does mean that the site's historical status is not an incidental detail to be dealt with after the commercial proposition has been accepted.

It should be part of the starting question.

What does development mean when the thing being developed is itself a protected piece of Kampala's history?

And perhaps more importantly:

What exactly are we trying to preserve when we preserve a historic urban site ; only a monument, or the relationship between the monument, the landscape and the city around it?

We should be careful about what we call “development”

There is sometimes an unfortunate assumption that opposing a particular construction proposal means opposing development.

It does not.

The construction industry cannot thrive without development. Cities cannot grow without construction. Uganda needs investment in infrastructure, housing, commercial buildings, public facilities and productive assets.

But good urban planning is not simply the art of finding somewhere to put another building.

It is also the discipline of deciding where not to build.

That is arguably one of the most important decisions a rapidly growing city can make.

The question is therefore not whether Bulwadda's proposal can produce a modern building.

It probably can.

The question is whether a hotel and shopping mall represent the best use of this particular piece of Kampala.

Those are not the same questions.

So what should happen?

Before anyone discusses architectural design, floor area, parking, solar panels or investment returns, Kampala should have a serious public-interest discussion about the site's future.

What does the city need?

What does the surrounding CBD already have?

What is missing?

What public spaces remain?

What is the environmental value of the existing mature vegetation?

What does the site's historical designation mean for redevelopment?

What alternatives exist for achieving the investor's commercial objectives without consuming one of Kampala's few remaining central open spaces?

And perhaps the most basic question of all:

Who is this development ultimately for?

The fact that land can generate more money as commercial real estate does not automatically mean that converting it is in the public interest.

A final thought

I remember, from more than two decades ago when I worked at an architectural firm in Kampala, encountering a proposal for commercial development on this same piece of land. It was ultimately not allowed to proceed.

I remember thinking about it then because Kampala was a very different city. There were nowhere near as many large shopping centres and commercial developments as there are today.

Yet the proposal was still considered inappropriate.

Now, after decades of urban growth, we have more commercial buildings and less open space.

So why are we back here?

Perhaps the question Kampala should be asking in 2026 is not: “What can we build on City Square?”

It should be: “What can we not afford to lose?”

Once the mature trees and gardens are gone, the open space is gone and the square becomes another commercial development, no amount of solar power or grassed roof gardens will bring that piece of Kampala back.

Ultimately, the lingering questions shall always be: Why this site? Why another mall? And why now, when the planning conversation globally is moving in the opposite direction?