From Shacks to Skyscrapers: Multiple Spatial Rationalities and Urban Transformation in Accra, Ghana

Lena Fält

doi:10.1007/s12132-016-9294-8

Abstract

Recent studies indicate that market-driven logics increasingly inform the governing of African cities. This paper explores this claim by analysing the spatial rationalities at work in the struggle over urban space in Accra, Ghana. Based on an in-depth case study of a state-led displacement of a marginalised informal settlement in central Accra that took place in September 2014, the paper demonstrates that the on-going urban transformation of this city must be understood as an outcome of multiple spatial rationalities rooted in the local urban history but also influenced by globally circulating urban ideals. While a market-driven rationality is clearly present in the state’s justification of the eviction, also ‘generative’ and ‘dispositional’ rationalities are used to legitimise this urban intervention. The paper further illustrates the conflicting rationalities between the state and the urban poor, emphasising how the former residents of the displaced settlement perceive of their former home as a place of opportunities in terms of livelihood strategies, sociability and affordable housing in contrast to the state’s problematisation of the area.

Highlights

African cities are growing and transforming at an unprecedented speed, and recent research suggests that market-driven rationalities increasingly inform city administrations’ endeavours to organise and manage urban space (Myers 2015; Watson 2014)
The paper shows that market-driven rationalities played an important role in the justification of this urban intervention and the concepts of urban revanchism and speculative urbanism are useful heuristics in the analysis of how the strive for capital accumulation, in combination with anti-poor attitudes and land speculation, informs contemporary urban change and creates new patterns of socio-spatial inequality in this West African urban context
These concepts do not fully capture the complex interplay of the multiple rationalities that were used in the justification of the displacement of Mensah, this paper stresses that non-market-driven rationalities must be incorporated in the analysis of contemporary urban change across the African continent

Summary

Introduction

African cities are growing and transforming at an unprecedented speed, and recent research suggests that market-driven rationalities increasingly inform city administrations’ endeavours to organise and manage urban space (Myers 2015; Watson 2014). Planning standards, spatial development frameworks, structure plans, local plans and land use controls’ (Ibid: 25), and in the case of Mensah Guinea, this strong dispositional rationality added to the multiple justifications of the eviction, as the following analysis will demonstrate. The relatively well-functioning auto-constructed infrastructures and services in Mensah Guinea point to the capability of the community to provide for itself, which in cities where the state is weak gives yet another rationality for settling in informal settlements This case demonstrates that the people who used to live in Mensah Guinea were prepared to negotiate with local authorities and develop the area in line with the authorities’ desire to ‘clean-up’ the place. Important political questions about what kind of city is desirable, and who will benefit and not by dominant city visions and planning practices, seem to be absent from the public discussion

Conclusion

Compliance with ethical standards