Author: Elizabeth Ardayfio-Schandorf
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 2869785488
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
This book is a product of collaborative research between the Institut de recherche pour le dveloppement (IRD, France), the University of Ghana, Legon and CODESRIA. It examines various economic, social and environmental challenges of urbanization that critically affect the capital of Ghana, which has experienced high demographic growth and territorial expansion. The study analyses the Greater Accra city dwellers residential practices, and focuses on two main factors influencing land and rental markets. On the one hand, it interrogates the constraints and dynamics of urban families, their needs and gender characteristics in terms of accommodation. On the other hand, it explores the opportunities and interests in investment on the part of land owners and real estate developers. At these two levels of describing the social and spatial discriminations, the book attempts to explain the difficult choices that this fragmented city faces. It emphasizes the role of mobility in structuring the metropolitan area, and the negative impact of lack of mobility which results in some households and communities suffering more than others. Light is thrown on diagnostics and prospects in the matter of urban planning.
Author: Richard Grant
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815631729
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214
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Book Description
As urbanization of the world’s population grows at an ever-increasing pace, the need to understand the effects of globalization on cities is at the forefront of urban studies. Traditional scholarship largely employs a framework of analysis based on the globalizing experience of Western cities. In Globalizing City, Richard Grant draws on ten years of empirical research in Accra, Ghana’s capital city, to show how this African metropolis is as deeply transformed by globalization as the cities of other world regions. Grant reveals the ways in which international, transnational, and local forces are operating on the urban landscape of Accra, from elite gated communities to the poorest slums. Through interviews and extensive fieldwork, he examines how foreign companies, returned expatriates, and native Ghanaians foster globalization on multiple levels. Globalizing City offers an excellent case study of the complex social and economic dynamics that have transformed Accra, providing an essential guide for studying globalizing cities in general.
Author: Jan Bredenoord
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131791015X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 543
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Book Description
The global increase in the number of slums calls for policies which improve the conditions of the urban poor, sustainably. This volume provides an extensive overview of current housing policies in Asia, Africa and Latin America and presents the facts and trends of recent housing policies. The chapters provide ideas and tools for pro-poor interventions with respect to the provision of land for housing, building materials, labour, participation and finance. The book looks at the role of the various stakeholders involved in such interventions, including national and local governments, private sector organisations, NGOs and Community-based Organisations.
Author: Armelle Choplin
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119812003
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
CONCRETE CITY “Armelle Choplin’s Concrete City weaves a novel and engaging analysis of urbanization by tracing the journeys of cement and people making urban life in West Africa. From post-independence high modernist ambitions to building the opportunities to make a living, the emerging transnational corridor along the West African coast provides a starting point for insights which will expand and inform understanding of both established and newly emerging urbanization processes in many different contexts.” —Jennifer Robinson, Professor of Geography, University College of London, UK “In this very innovative and superbly illustrated book, Armelle Choplin makes cement vibrant with affect, politics, economic interests and cultural meanings. She takes us to a fascinating journey along the West African urban corridor following the social life of concrete and showing how this material shapes contemporary urbanization and everyday life.” —Ola Söderström, Professor of Geography, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland Concrete City: Material Flows and Urbanization in West Africa delivers a theoretically informed, ethnographic exploration of the African urban world through the life of concrete. Emblematic of frenetic urban and capitalistic development, this material is pervasive, shaping contemporary urban landscapes and societies and their links to the global world. It stands and circulates at the heart of major financial investments, political forces and environmental debates. At the same time, it epitomises values of modernity and success, redefining social practices, forms of dwelling and living, and popular imaginaries. The book invites the reader to follow bags of cement from production plant to construction site, along the 1000-kilometre urban corridor that links Abidjan to Accra, Lomé, Cotonou and Lagos, combining the perspectives of cement tycoons, entrepreneurs and political stakeholders, but also of ordinary men and women who plan, build and dream of the Concrete City. With this innovative exploration of urban life through concrete, Armelle Choplin delivers a fascinating journey into and reflection on the sustainability of our urban futures.
Author: Ato Quayson
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822376296
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 477
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Book Description
In Oxford Street, Accra, Ato Quayson analyzes the dynamics of Ghana's capital city through a focus on Oxford Street, part of Accra's most vibrant and globalized commercial district. He traces the city's evolution from its settlement in the mid-seventeenth century to the present day. He combines his impressions of the sights, sounds, interactions, and distribution of space with broader dynamics, including the histories of colonial and postcolonial town planning and the marks of transnationalism evident in Accra's salsa scene, gym culture, and commercial billboards. Quayson finds that the various planning systems that have shaped the city—and had their stratifying effects intensified by the IMF-mandated structural adjustment programs of the late 1980s—prepared the way for the early-1990s transformation of a largely residential neighborhood into a kinetic shopping district. With an intense commercialism overlying, or coexisting with, stark economic inequalities, Oxford Street is a microcosm of historical and urban processes that have made Accra the variegated and contradictory metropolis that it is today.
Author: Yaw Boadu-Ayeboafoh
Publisher: Graphic Communications Group
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 48
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Book Description
Author: Evans Osabuohien
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1801176868
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 408
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Book Description
COVID-19 in the African Continent examines the development, achievements, and challenges that have resulted owing to COVID-19 pandemic and how these precarious socioeconomic situations are being managed in African countries.
Author: Elizabeth Ardayfio-Schandorf
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 2869785453
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
This book is a product of collaborative research between the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD, France), the University of Ghana, Legon and CODESRIA. It examines various economic, social and environmental challenges of urbanization that critically affect the capital of Ghana, which has experienced high demographic growth and territorial expansion. This work analyses the Greater Accra city dwellers' residential practices, and focuses on two main factors influencing land and rental markets. On the one hand, it interrogates the constraints and dynamics of urban families, their needs and gender characteristics in terms of accommodation. On the other hand, it explores the opportunities and interests in investment on the part of land owners and real estate developers. At these two levels of describing the social and spatial discriminations, the book attempts to explain the difficult choices that this fragmented city faces. It emphasizes the role of mobility in structuring the metropolitan area, and the negative impact of lack of mobility which results in some households and communities suffering more than others. The book throws light on diagnostics and prospects in the matter of urban planning.
Author: Carlos Nunes Silva
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351271822
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
This handbook contributes with new evidence and new insights to the on-going debate on the de-colonization of knowledge on urban planning in Africa. African cities grew rapidly since the mid-20th century, in part due to rising rural migration and rapid internal demographic growth that followed the independence in most African countries. This rapid urbanization is commonly seen as a primary cause of the current urban management challenges with which African cities are confronted. This importance given to rapid urbanization prevented the due consideration of other dimensions of the current urban problems, challenges and changes in African cities. The contributions to this handbook explore these other dimensions, looking in particular to the nature and capacity of local self-government and to the role of urban governance and urban planning in the poor urban conditions found in most African cities. It deals with current and contemporary urban challenges and urban policy responses, but also offers an historical overview of local governance and urban policies during the colonial period in the late 19th and 20th centuries, offering ample evidence of common features, and divergent features as well, on a number of facets, from intra-urban racial segregation solutions to the relationships between the colonial power and the natives, to the assimilation policy, as practiced by the French and Portuguese and the Indirect Rule put in place by Britain in some or in part of its colonies. Using innovative approaches to the challenges confronting the governance of African cities, this handbook is an essential read for students and scholars of Urban Africa, urban planning in Africa and African Development.
Author: Carolyn Loeb
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317036077
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
In a globalizing world, frontiers may be in flux but they remain as significant as ever. New borders are established even as old borders are erased. Beyond lines on maps, however, borders are spatial zones in which distinctive architectural, graphic, and other design elements are deployed to signal the nature of the space and to guide, if not actually control, behaviour and social relations within it. This volume unpacks how manipulations of space and design in frontier zones, historically as well as today, set the stage for specific kinds of interactions and convey meanings about these sites and the experiences they embody. Frontier zones organize an array of functions to facilitate the passage of goods, information, and people, and to define and control access. Bringing together studies from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and North America, this collection of essays casts a wide net to consider borders of diverse sorts. Investigations of contemporary political frontiers are set within the context of examinations of historical borders, borders that have existed within cities, and virtual borders. This range allows for reflection on shifts in how frontier zones are articulated and the impermanence of border emplacements, as well as on likely scenarios for future frontiers. This text is unique in bringing together a number of scholarly perspectives in the arts and humanities to examine how spatial and architectural design decisions convey meaning, shape or abet specific social practices, and stage memories of frontier zones that no longer function as such. It joins and expands discussions in social science disciplines, in which considerations of border practices tend to overlook the role of built form and material culture more broadly in representing social practices and meanings.
