IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/lauspo/v109y2021ics0264837721003914.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

From a cluster of villages to a city: Housing politics and the dilemmas of spatial planning in Tamale, Ghana

Author

Listed:
  • Yakubu, Ibrahim

Abstract

This paper examines the growth trajectories of the city of Tamale, Ghana, using secondary data and archival material. It profiles the colonial planning experiences in the city and the way in which planning practices influenced collective actions in the pro-poor housing sector. The analyses show that at its founding in the early part of the 20th century, Tamale had a considerably large proportion of indigenous population whose housing practices fell beyond the scope of formal housing and planning regulations. Thus, moving people for purposes of redeveloping old indigenous housing clusters was the defining feature of colonial urban planning practices in the city. It is argued in this paper that the fragmented planning strategy adopted for the colonial city created an agglomeration of suburbs with poorly articulated spatial connectivity and a pattern of development which could not be easily predicted nor managed. To date, this pattern of spatial development continues to structure the housing politics in low-income sections of the city and offer part explanation to why housing demolitions have become fully entrenched in post-independent urban development programmes. The paper makes significant contributions by clarifying the exact mechanism through which colonial planning decisions were inscribed on the emergent city and the ways in which the attendant socioeconomic and spatial transformation processes have served to exclude the poor from the city space.

Suggested Citation

  • Yakubu, Ibrahim, 2021. "From a cluster of villages to a city: Housing politics and the dilemmas of spatial planning in Tamale, Ghana," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:109:y:2021:i:c:s0264837721003914
    DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2021.105668
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837721003914
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.landusepol.2021.105668?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ash Amin, 2013. "Telescopic urbanism and the poor," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(4), pages 476-492, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cascón, J.M. & González-Arteaga, T. & de Andrés Calle, R., 2022. "A new preference classification approach: The λ-dissensus cluster algorithm," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andrea Pollio, 2020. "Architectures of millennial development: Entrepreneurship and spatial justice at the bottom of the pyramid in Cape Town," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(3), pages 573-592, May.
    2. Bruno Meeus & Luce Beeckmans & Bas van Heur & Karel Arnaut, 2020. "Broadening the Urban Planning Repertoire with an ‘Arrival Infrastructures’ Perspective," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(3), pages 11-22.
    3. Tarini Bedi, 2016. "Mimicry, friction and trans-urban imaginaries: Mumbai taxis/Singapore-style," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 48(6), pages 1012-1029, June.
    4. Alma Clavin & Niamh Moore-Cherry & Gerald Mills, 2021. "Mapping Green Dublin: Co-Creating a Greener Future With Local Communities," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 6(4), pages 96-109.
    5. Linda Peake, 2016. "The Twenty-First-Century Quest for Feminism and the Global Urban," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(1), pages 219-227, January.
    6. Alan Gilbert, 2015. "Urban governance in the South: How did Bogotá lose its shine?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 52(4), pages 665-684, March.
    7. Jenny McArthur & Enora Robin, 2019. "Victims of their own (definition of) success: Urban discourse and expert knowledge production in the Liveable City," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(9), pages 1711-1728, July.
    8. Ananya Roy, 2013. "Spectral futures," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(4), pages 493-497, August.
    9. Laura Cesafsky, 2017. "How to Mend a Fragmented City: a Critique of ‘Infrastructural Solidarity'," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(1), pages 145-161, January.
    10. Rodrigo Cardoso & Evert Meijers & Maarten van Ham & Martijn Burger & Duco de Vos, 2019. "Why bright city lights dazzle and illuminate: A cognitive science approach to urban promises," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(2), pages 452-470, February.
    11. Jenny Mbaye & Cecilia Dinardi, 2019. "Ins and outs of the cultural polis: Informality, culture and governance in the global South," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(3), pages 578-593, February.
    12. Tabea Bork-Hüffer & Simon Alexander Peth, 2020. "Arrival or Transient Spaces? Differentiated Politics of Mobilities, Socio-Technological Orderings and Migrants’ Socio-Spatial Embeddedness," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(3), pages 33-43.
    13. Melissa Wilson & Bob Catterall, 2015. "City 's holistic and cumulative project (1996-2016): (1) Then and now: 'It all comes together in Los Angeles?'," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 131-142, February.
    14. Hillary Angelo & Christine Hentschel, 2015. "Interactions with infrastructure as windows into social worlds: A method for critical urban studies: Introduction," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(2-3), pages 306-312, June.
    15. Cardoso, Rodrigo V. & Meijers, Evert J. & van Ham, Maarten & Burger, Martijn J. & de Vos, Duco, 2017. "The City as a Self-Help Book: The Psychology of Urban Promises," IZA Discussion Papers 10693, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Martina Bovo, 2020. "How the Presence of Newly Arrived Migrants Challenges Urban Spaces: Three Perspectives from Recent Literature," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(3), pages 23-32.
    17. Nicholas L Caverly, 2021. "Sensing others: Empty buildings and sensory worlds in Detroit," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 39(6), pages 1079-1096, September.
    18. Mike Hodson & Frank W. Geels & Andy McMeekin, 2017. "Reconfiguring Urban Sustainability Transitions, Analysing Multiplicity," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-20, February.
    19. Bruno Meeus & Luce Beeckmans & Bas van Heur & Karel Arnaut, 2020. "Broadening the Urban Planning Repertoire with an ‘Arrival Infrastructures’ Perspective," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(3), pages 11-22.
    20. Martina Bovo, 2020. "How the Presence of Newly Arrived Migrants Challenges Urban Spaces: Three Perspectives from Recent Literature," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(3), pages 23-32.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:109:y:2021:i:c:s0264837721003914. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joice Jiang (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/land-use-policy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.