Reflections on urbanisation, land supply and the Ghanaian physical planning system towards sustaining cemetery land use in Greater Kumasi Metropolitan Area

Abstract

Urbanisation and land supply are real problems in many urban centres. Due to the concentration of people in towns and cities beyond their capacities and lateral urban expansion into the peripheries, municipal facilities and resources, particularly land, are constrained or overstretched to engender unfavourable competition among land uses. In this way, less economic yielding land use like cemeteries are competed out. This study, therefore, explored the trio of urbanisation, land supply and how the Ghanaian physical planning system contribute to sustaining cemetery land use in the Greater Kumasi Metropolitan Area of Ghana. Having been underpinned by the interpretive research paradigm, the study correspondingly used qualitative research methodological approaches including in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions to collect data through audio tape recording from thirty (30) interviews which were transcribed and analysed. Findings of the study include encroachment on cemeteries primarily by traditional leaders for economic gains, acute shortage of burial spaces in the metropolis’ cemeteries leading to congestion and re-use of old graves with shallow depths in order not to disturb earlier interments. Unfortunately too, the physical planning system does not provide for detailed and conscious planning for cemeteries to sustain them. To help deal with the situation, policy measures have been suggested.