Enclave urbanism in Ghana’s Greater Accra Region: Examining the socio-spatial consequences

Abstract

Enclave urbanism – the privatisation of land for housing, technology, and commercial purposes – is gaining currency among scholars as a notion for explaining contemporary spatial restructuring. However, existing scholarship tends to over-emphasise enclave urbanism as a universal phenomenon that has negative consequences for certain groups in society. Recently, there are calls for more contextual and empirical analyses of the ramifications of enclave urbanism. Drawing on assemblage thinking (AT) to analyse enclave urbanism in Ghana’s Greater Accra Region (GAR), this paper argues that enclavism is a process that de/territorialises space through the active composition of multiple objects and actors. By decentering the binaries of elite and underclass and winners and losers in analysing the socio-spatial impacts of urban enclaves in GAR, the paper suggests that the socio-spatial effects of enclave urbanism are not pregiven but are produced through the nature of assemblages that the actors enter and re/constitute. In terms of land use policy and planning, more needs to be done by local governments in GAR to protect highly suitable agricultural lands and mitigate the negative impacts of urban enclaves on access to land by the vulnerable.