Urban Planning Agencies Research Articles

Green streetism precarity in Kumasi, Ghana

There is much interest in urban green space planning and management; yet little attention has been paid to the notions of green streetism in African cities. This paper responds to this lacuna by using a case study of Kumasi (Ghana) to: (i) examine the character of urban green space; (ii) analyze agency knowledge on green streetism; and (iii) assess agency strategies for changing the phase of green streetism. Using secondary document analysis and interview with seven urban planning agencies, findings show a rapid decline of urban green space in Kumasi from about 31% of the total land area in 2013 to about 3% in 2022. Despite all respondents reporting knowledge on green streetism, they identified resource constraints, nonchalant attitude of some urban citizens and poor maintenance practices as major barriers to green streetism development and management in the city. Strategies for reviving green streetism are further discussed, within the context of African urbanization.

Geospatial Technologies approach for Cemetery Management Solutions: A Review

 The study was first initiated to tackle an issue currently faced by the state religious council in Perlis, Malaysia, towards the oversupply of waqf land specifically for cemetery purposes which would be unsustainable for the current development trend. This study was conducted quantitatively by obtaining data from the urban planning department, PLANMalaysia, and the state religious agencies, MAIPs, Perlis. Two types of GIS software used are QGIS and MapInfo, while the result from the database will be updated into MAIPs’ database, so-called MYGOS, with the most recent data. Therefore, the study finds out that most of the waqf land is not in line with the land use zoning of the local plan, which indicates a lack of two-way communication between the state planning authority and the state religious council. This caused the cemetery land supply in Perlis to exceed the current and future needs until 2035. Consequently, the study will elevate the management system of waqf land in Perlis by adapting the current technology of GIS. Updating the database with the most recent data will ease other related agencies to access and integrate the information related to waqf land and improve data transparency in promoting cooperation between the two agencies. This study demonstrates the uses of GIS in waqf land management, from conventional data storing methods to modern and convenient technologies, and can also show the data inconsistency between the religious institution and urban planning agencies in Malaysia.

Breathing Room: Working Principles of Independent Art Spaces in African Cities

Breathing Room: Working Principles of Independent Art Spaces in African Cities

Citizen participation through volunteered geographic information as equipment for a smart city to monitor urban decay

One of the issues brought on by rapid urbanization is the loss of livability owing to poor waste management, a lack of resources, air pollution, traffic congestion, and outdated buildings and public infrastructure. The idea of a smart city has arisen as one of the potential solutions to this concern. In this study, we havedemonstrated how citizen science helpsimmenselyto the growth of a smart city by crowdsourcing data about urban decay. Tehran, the capital of Iran, which is home to the history of many people's social lives, has begun losing some of its vitality. Municipalities have plans for dealing with urban decline and revival, but we indicate that volunteered geographic information (VGI) would be more effective in turning such ideas into practice. According to our research, there are three different types of organizations active in urban renewal: municipalities, civil and urban planning agencies, and organizations that support tourism and cultural heritage. As a result, we provided a system design that outlines the duties that each institution has in relation to urban renewal. In addition, we suggested a service broker with the capacity to publish VGI in order to offer interoperability related to geographic data and services based on spatial data infrastructure (SDI). Beyond that, various types of urban decay, necessary management procedures, the sequence of information in system components, and the volunteer's behavior confrontingthe system were all specified in the form of an object-oriented design. A prototype system based on state-of-the-art in open-source technologies was developed to test our hypothesis. The VGI system enabled us to monitor urban decay events in real time using the management dashboard. We have shown that volunteers can distinguish between urban declines and typical instances like a binary classifier in the quality control method proposed in this study. Performance was 90% based on the findings of the quality control. A running VGI system would start beneficenceafter 3months and make a profit of 150% after a year, based on our estimates.

Beyond rhetoric: urban planning-climate change resilience conundrum in Accra, Ghana

Urban planning remains an important tool in managing climate change impacts. It also remains crucial in building sustainable adaptive capacities, particularly in cities of the global north. It however remains largely unknown in urban Africa about planning agencies' perspectives on climate change adaptation-urban planning conundrum, and corresponding policy responses. This paper thus examines urban planners' perspectives and planning responses on managing climate change impacts and building adaptive capacities in Accra, Ghana. Using a review of four relevant urban planning and climate change policies, and interviews with five urban planning agencies in Accra, findings indicate that urban planning regimes are less efficient, more reactionary, and unsustainable in building resilience and adaptive capacities to climate change impacts. The findings show evidence of weak institutional and stakeholder coordination, inadequate funds and institutional logistics and human capacity, which have contributed to the inability to manage ‘normal’ climate change impacts such as floods and build resilience to them. The paper concludes with suggestions for building resilience to climate change impacts and incorporating adaptation concerns into urban planning efforts in Ghana.

Data-driven spatial-temporal analysis of highway traffic volume considering weather and festival impacts

This paper aims to discover the relationships among the weather, holidays, and the traffic volume using multisource data from the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) and to reveal the corresponding regional spatial–temporal traffic and migration patterns. Using accurate hourly weather and traffic volume data, this study examines the traffic volume from the origin to the destination county by considering traffic factors, weather factors, and temporal factors. A Random-effect regression model and a random forest model are established to analyze the above factors and identify the factors that contribute to the annual variation in traffic patterns. An RER + RF fusion prediction model based on ridge regression is proposed to predict the hourly traffic volume from origin to destination county, and is adopted in the spatial–temporal submodels. The results show that the impact of rainfall on traffic volume varies as the rainfall varies, and a rain-induced traffic pattern shift towards highway travel is found, which interacts with the negative effect of rainfall on highway traffic volumes. The Spring Festival holiday witnesses a V-shaped traffic volume curve during the study period. Some traffic pattern differences are also found in different spatial–temporal submodels. The RER + RF fusion model performs better in predicting in parent model and most of the spatial–temporal submodels, which validates the proposed model in predicting the traffic volume. The findings can provide transport agencies, urban planning agencies, and urban agglomeration travelers with valuable information for highway transport activity analysis considering the effects of weather and festival events.

Impact of Settlement Growth on Yenagoa’s Urban Environment

This research is a study on the assessment of settlement growth and its impact on the urban environment in Yenagoa Metropolis. Landsat imageries of 1988, 1996, 2004, 2012 and 2020 were acquired from the United Sates Geographical Survey. Supervised image classifications using level 1 classification scheme was adopted to extract LandUse/LandCover. The five Epochs of images were used to extract the built-up areas, water bodies and vegetation areas. The area (ha) of land use for each epoch was determined using clipping images. The spatio-temporal changes were determined as a percentage of LULC per epoch and which was done following standard methods. Mapping technique was used to compare satellite imageries. Findings showed that built up areas was 1,279.81 in 1988, 2,497.87 in 1996, 4,554.73 in 2009, 7,804.30 in 2012 and 10,447.50 in 2020. While the percentage change of built-up are in 1988 was 6.12%, 1996 was 11.94%, 2004 was 21.78%, 2012 was 34.31% and 2020 was 30.09%, respectively. It is therefore recommended here that government should empower urban planning and development agencies, legally and financially to carry out their responsibility to implement existing master plan of the city. Engage in citizen education on how to contribute in managing the environment and sustainable land use management framework in the study area for proper management of the urban environment to enhance sustained settlement growth in the city.

Multiplicity in Municipal Administration and Its Implication on Urban Planning Functions in Nigeria

This study assessed the effects of multiple components of municipal administrations on the functions of urban planning agencies in Nigeria, using Osun State as the case study. It examined the profile of the professionals across the levels of planning agencies in the state, the key activity areas of the planning agencies, operational parameters of the planning agencies, and the relationship between the planning agencies. Data used for the study were sourced from questionnaire administered on the heads of all the 35 planning agencies in the state. The study revealed that the agencies experienced conflict of interest in their operations and the reason for that was mostly jurisdictional. Also, the agencies seldom related with one another. The study concluded that the structure of municipal administration in Nigerian is responsible for proliferation of planning agencies and, consequently, the duplication of planning functions in the state, nay, Nigeria. It recommended, among others, legislative reform for effective municipal administration in the state and Nigeria, as a whole.

Urban land use planning in Ghana: Navigating complex coalescence of land ownership and administration

Global literature reporting on land governance indicates considerable differences between land ownership and land administration. Yet, in many Sub-Saharan African countries, particularly Ghana, this relationship is blurred in complex land governance regimes. An understanding of this relationship in Ghana’s customary land sector – the dominant land ownership type – is critical in advancing urban land use planning and promoting effective urban management in this era of rapid urbanisation across Africa. Unfortunately, little is known about this relationship in the context of land use planning. Using Kumasi, a rapidly growing city in Ghana as a case study, the purpose of this paper is threefold: (i) to discuss the relationship between customary land ownership and administration in the context of land use planning, (ii) to explore institutional perspectives on sustainable land use planning; and (iii) to examine the implications of customary land ownership and administration on sustainable land use planning. Using a review of relevant land use planning documents on Ghana, and interviews with four urban planning agencies and four customary land owners (chiefs/traditional leaders) in Kumasi, findings indicate a demonstration of an unclear nature of legislative planning framework and a lack of focus on customary land ownership and administration system in urban land use planning. Despite planning laws (e.g., zoning guidelines) emphasising separation of ownership from administration, findings indicate no distinction between customary land ownership and land administration as the traditional leaders (the owners) administer the land via determination of land uses, arbitration of land disputes, and location determination of important community infrastructure and services. Evidence of repetitive and cumbersome nature of land administration by traditional owners and government planning agencies, weak agency framework and coordination challenges has contributed to limited progress of sustainable land use planning in the city.

Spatiotemporal model for estimating electric vehicles adopters

The use of fossil fuel vehicles is one of the factors responsible for the degradation of air quality in urban areas. In order to reduce levels of air pollution in metropolitan areas, several countries have encouraged the use of electric vehicles in the cities. However, due to the high investment costs in this class of vehicles, it is expected that the spatial distribution of electric vehicles' adopters will be heterogeneous. The additional charging power required by electric vehicles' batteries can change operation and expansion planning of power distribution utilities. In addition, urban planning agencies should analyze the most suitable locations for the construction of electric vehicle recharging stations. Thus, in order to provide information for the planning of electric mobility services in the city, this paper presents a spatiotemporal model for estimating the rate of electric vehicles' adopters per subareas. Results are spatial databases that can be viewed in geographic information systems to observe regions with greater expectancy of residential electric vehicle adopters. These outcomes can help utilities to develop new services that ground on the rising availability of electric mobility in urban zones.

Urban planning and climate change in Ghana

Urban planning is commonly blamed for its failure to exert a positive influence on managing climate change impacts in urban Africa; yet little is known about planning agencies' perspectives on climate change-urban planning conundrum, and corresponding policy responses. It is in response to this gap, this paper explores agency perspectives and policy responses on the possibility and procedure for harnessing urban planning as a tool for managing climate change impacts in a Ghanaian city of Kumasi. Using a review of three relevant urban planning and climate change policies of Ghana, and interviews with six urban planning and climate-related agencies in Kumasi, findings indicate a demonstration of an unclear nature of policies, and a lack of focus on climate change issues in urban planning. Evidence of weak agency framework and coordination challenges (e.g., logistics, enforcement of laws) were reported, a situation that has contributed to the city's inability to manage ‘normal’ climate change impacts (e.g., flash floods). The paper concludes with proposals for incorporating climate change concerns into urban planning in Ghana.

The Role of Urban Mobility in Retail Business Survival

Economic and urban planning agencies have strong interest in tackling the hard problem of predicting the odds of survival of individual retail businesses. In this work, we tap urban mobility data available both from a location-based intelligence platform, Foursquare, and from public transportation agencies, and investigate whether mobility-derived features can help foretell the failure of such retail businesses, over a 6 month horizon, across 10 distinct cities spanning the globe. We hypothesise that the survival of such a retail outlet is correlated with not only venue-specific characteristics but also broader neighbourhood-level effects. Through careful statistical analysis of Foursquare and taxi mobility data, we uncover a set of discriminative features, belonging to the neighbourhood's static characteristics, the venue-specific customer visit dynamics, and the neighbourhood's mobility dynamics. We demonstrate that classifiers trained on such features can predict such survival with high accuracy, achieving approximately 80% precision and recall across the cities. We also show that the impact of such features varies across new and established venues and across different cities. Besides achieving a significant improvement over past work on business vitality prediction, our work demonstrates the vital role that mobility dynamics plays in the economic evolution of a city.

Urban heat island intensity and spatial variability by synoptic weather type in the northeast U.S.

Understanding regional air temperature (Ta) variability and urban heat island (UHI) magnitude has posed challenges given the minimal observational stations in urban areas. This study uses a dense network to evaluate the degree to which synoptic weather influences the UHI intensity and fine scale Ta variability on days of extreme heat. We examine daytime and nighttime temperatures in four large northeastern cities (urban-suburban-rural) using a dataset with relatively high spatiotemporal resolutions (100–200 stations per area, 5min or 60min intervals) for May–Sept, 2006–2013. Results show stronger UHI intensity and enhanced Ta variability under hot, dry weather types, with the most intense UHIs overnight in dry conditions. Absolute Ta magnitudes within both urban and rural areas remain heightened under moist weather type conditions. New York City presents the highest average nighttime UHI intensity (3.51°C). Minimal, and at times negative, UHIs are often present in the daytime, appearing on 38% and 28% of days in New York City and Boston, respectively. An exploratory analysis demonstrates a significant ability to predict average Ta at each station using common environmental predictors. Findings emphasize the importance in distinguishing between absolute maximum Ta versus UHI intensity by weather type for communication and translation of heat mitigation practices and health protection by public health and urban planning agencies.

Evaluating the effects of compact growth on air quality in already-high-density cities with an integrated land use-transport-emission model: A case study of Xiamen, China

Urban form may play an important role in improving air quality, but studies on already-high-density cities are relatively limited. In this paper, we developed an integrated land use-transport-emission model with TRANUS and MOBILE 6.2, selected an already-high-density city, Xiamen, as the study area, and explored the effects of compact growth on traffic emissions and exposure to air pollution. The results show that compact growth may significantly reduce regional traffic emissions even in an already-high-density city, but high-density developments may result in higher population-weighed exposures to air pollution. The finding implies that compact growth strategies should be carried out and the metric of population-weighed exposures should be considered in already-high-density cities. Integrated land use-transport-emission models may serve as a useful tool for urban planning agencies to decide appropriate locations for urban growths.

Spatial Planning in Ghana: Exploring the Contradictions

The purpose of this research is twofold: to explore the complexity of spatial plan preparation and implementation in Ghana using Kumasi as a case study; and second, to examine the contradictions of spatial plans and ‘actual development’ occurring in Kumasi. Using social science research methods (semi-structured interviews) and physical survey (land use plans), findings indicate that spatial planning in Kumasi is a bureaucratic process hijacked by urban planning agencies with limited involvement of urban residents. As a result, urban development is considerably influenced by spontaneous informal development patterns (i.e. self-organization). This phenomenon of self-organization is expressed in a context of uncertainty created by weak spatial planning system which encourages haphazard development. Regrettably, in Kumasi, self-organization is often overlooked by spatial planning agencies as they focused on rigid and exclusionary spatial plans. This paper advocates consideration and integration of self-organization processes in spatial planning efforts to respond adequately to the urban development challenges confronting Kumasi.

Pop-up landscapes: a new trigger to push up land value?

ABSTRACTThrough a qualitative analysis of pop-up landscapes on Philadelphia’s Delaware Waterfront, this paper examines how entrepreneurial urban actors, such as municipal officials, urban planning agencies, and landscape designers, strategically harness to catalyze investment. While pop-up landscapes have disrupted negative associations with the waterfront, providing a space for people to reimagine the city and playing an active role as an integrative public space, the paper argues that there are reasons to be skeptical about the long-term goals the pop-up landscapes serve, given the widespread focus on real estate-led development.

A Ghanaian twist to urban sprawl

With its inception in urban studies in the 1930s, the notion of urban sprawl was institutionalised and globalised. However, urban sprawl research has mostly focused on developed countries compared with the situation in African countries. To address part of this gap, this paper appraises urban sprawl in Ghana, using Ejisu a peri-urban area of Kumasi as a case study in order to understand its characteristics, causes and effects on urbanites and urban functionality. Household and physical surveys, agency interviews and document reviews were used. Findings indicate that urban sprawl in Ejisu has spatial and aspatial characteristics, and is occurring in the absence of basic infrastructure services such as water and sanitation, and has become an extra yoke on urban planning agencies who are already faced with limited personnel and logistical capacity.

Urban planning and politics in Ghana

Through an analysis of Ghana’s political and administrative structure, which established the basis of urban planning practice, this paper shows how urban planning has failed to create liveable and functional cities in Ghana. This paper uses semi-structured interviews and agency consultations to supplement document reviews and news paper articles to address the dearth of research on the subject in Ghana. Findings show that dominant political elites, with little or no urban planning background, control and dictate urban planning activities resulting in chaotic scenes and urban blight across Ghanaian cities. Analyses here reinforce the growing recognition that urban planning outcomes in Ghana, and most African countries are not shaped by professional practice and do not reflect the aspirations of the community, but instead political elites. Urban planning agencies are left vulnerable as their activities are interfered, dictated and hindered by both traditional and mainstream political elites. This paper advocates for independence of urban planning agencies in the performance of their duties.

Making land use – Transport models operational tools for planning: From a top-down to an end-user approach

Land Use and Transport Integrated models (LUTIs) are promising approaches for urban planning. There is large literature describing their technical architectures or using them in various scientific contexts. Yet little attention has been paid to expectations of practitioners (planners) and to the operational use of such models. The gap between lab application and operational use for planning practice is still to be filled. We shed light on what would make them definitely accepted and more used by planners to evaluate a range of urban and transport policies. In addition to literature review and our own experience dealing with urban planning agencies, we have interviewed different types of end users in France to identify their motivations and barriers to use LUTI models. The results show demand for a far more bottom-up oriented approach: the models should consider objectives and general needs of end users to live up to their expectations. Only a closer collaboration between modelers and end users, and more efforts to integrate modeling into urban planning, will make LUTIs considered as relevant approaches.

The Riverfront as a Mirror: The Case of the Transformations in Post‐Soviet Cities

Cities that have gone through the long period of integration in the ex‐Soviet Union naturally incorporated a set of principles that are now under pressure. It's in this context that we review the central question of the relationship between river and city.Tbilisi, Georgia, is representative of the challenges faced by cities that experienced the fast transition from state‐controlled to open‐market economies. Territorial planning, as a single system of state spatial planning, is presently still highly unstructured and has very little practical influence, with several urban planning decisions being made with little regard for formal urban planning agencies. One of the key issues in the capital city, Tbilisi, is the lack of green/recreational zones, which is also expressed in the loss of public space along the urban riverfront.Undermanaged growth of post‐Soviet city, expiration of the term of the last general plan, and disregard for historical traditions of city planning resulted in an abnormal and complex problem of interplay between Tbilisi and River Kura. The river has been, in the last few decades, striped of its architectural planning significance.Interrelation between Tbilisi city and the River Kura constitutes a complex and challenging urban problem but their transformation is related also with political aims. Kura, as an essential active element of the landscape, is being used to influence the city's planning character and as political instrument.This presentation highlights, through an overview of some relevant examples from Tbilisi of planning and design, how the interface zones between river and surrounding plots of land have been transformed to increase urban–river connectivity. Yet, this transformation also results in the emergence of urban projects that symbolize more political and economic powers that the aspiration of the people to appropriate public spaces.