Towards an alternative interpretation of the socio-cultural dimensions of urban greenspace planning in the Global South: Evidence from the Kumasi Metropolis of Ghana

ABSTRACT

Many scholars offer alternatives to Global North theories on urban governance, access to socioeconomic opportunities, and informality in the Global South. Yet, these alternative arguments have scarcely been applied to urban greenspace planning. Oftentimes, residents are characterized negatively as the cause of greenspace decline in African cities due to encroachment and/or vandalism. This paper offers an alternative perspective using data on 400 residents from Ghana’s Kumasi Metropolis. It argues that while residents’ place a low emphasis on urban greenspaces, this is indicative of their prioritization and survival strategies of meeting their needs. To simply characterize residents negatively, therefore, ignores the underlying context and reasons for urban greenspace decline and the contestations between residents’ priorities and urban greenspaces in African cities. This paper suggests an appreciation of local context to integrate residents’ needs and survival strategies into urban greenspace planning in African cities and the Global South in general.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Dr. Danilo Palazzo and Dr. Xinhao Wang for their support and feedback on this research project. We are also grateful to Dr. Seth Okyere Asare for his review and feedback on the initial draft of the manuscript and the reviewers for their feedback. The School of Planning at the University of Cincinnati provided funding for the fieldwork that informed this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This is because (i) the new jurisdictions were not yet functionally independent at the time of data collection and relied on the old Metropolis for their functionality, (ii) other data sources used in this research utilized the old Metropolis’ boundary which included the newly demarcated municipalities as sub-metros, (iii) unavailable data on the new municipalities as these new jurisdictions were still in their formative stage and without functional governance structures, (iv) residents also reported their greenspace use 12 months before the data collection which captured the old metropolis, and (v) data collection was a cumulative process that began with institutional interviews in 2015. All these informed the choice of the metropolis as it officially existed prior to November 2017 to ensure alignment of data sources used for the broader research.

2. These two are collectively equivalent to high school education in the United States.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the School of Planning, University of Cincinnati.

Notes on contributors

Stephen Kofi Diko

Stephen Kofi Diko is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Memphis. He holds a PhD in Regional Development Planning from the University of Cincinnati. His research examines sustainable urban development and policy from the aspects of climate change, greenspaces, flooding, informality, plan quality assessment, and local economic development.

Leah M. Hollstein

Leah M. Hollstein is an Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati. She holds a PhD in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Texas at Austin. Her professional and research interests include Land Use Planning and Equity, Environmental Planning, Green Infrastructure, Planning Practice, Research Methods, Landscape Architecture, Urban History and Change, and Science and Technology Studies.