Garden city without parks: an assessment of the availability and conditions of parks in Kumasi

Abstract

Parks are integral part of the urban environment. They play economic, structural, socio-cultural and ecological roles for the sustenance of urban areas . Unfortunately, the rapid growth of the city of Kumasi, which was historically referred to as ‘the garden city of West Africa’ is threatening the sustainability of tits green spaces . This paper seeks to assess the state of parks in Kumasi and determine the factors that have contributed to the loss of these parks in the city. The paper relied on multiple sources of data such as documents review, field observations and institutional interviews. The state of the parks in Kumasi was assessed using the following themes, accessibility, attractiveness, maintenance, comfort and safety. The results showed that green spaces in Kumasi are generally being lost because of the city's rapid and unguarded urbanisation, coupled with the little attention to parks by city authorities .. It was observed that demographic and physical expansion of the city have had adverse impact on the availability, management and to a larger extent the condition of parks. For example, the available park land per 1000 population was 0.25 acres in 2000 and this reduced to 0.04 acres in 2019. Institutional failures in effectively developing, protecting and managing park spaces in the city were the other key reasons for the loss of green spaces in Kumasi. The paper concludes that there can never be a garden city without adequate parks and green spaces; hence, the need for a multi-stakeholder response to the deteriorating park system in Kumasi to ensure the restoration of the city's garden city status.