Nairobi, Jan. 8 -- Somebody should go to jail for the deaths caused by collapse of the 14-storey building under construction in Nairobi's South C. This was not an accident. It was a foreseeable, preventable outcome of a city where capital has outrun the law-and where planning rules have become negotiable suggestions rather than binding safeguards.

Let me begin with personal experience. When I moved to South C in the early 1990s, homeowners were buying into a low-density, gated residential neighbourhood.

We invested on the basis of clearly defined zoning rules, planning approvals and infrastructure assumptions. These were not vague expectations; they were the legal and economic foundations of our decisions.

The original developers-the f...