Planning Theory & Practice

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Becoming Vulnerable to Flooding: An Urban Assemblage View of Flooding in an African City

Clifford Amoako & Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah

To cite this article: Clifford Amoako & Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah (2020): Becoming Vulnerable to Flooding: An Urban Assemblage View of Flooding in an African City, Planning Theory & Practice, DOI: 10.1080/14649357.2020.1776377 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2020.1776377

Published online: 18 Jun 2020.

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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rptp20 PLANNING THEORY & PRACTICE https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2020.1776377

Becoming Vulnerable to Flooding: An Urban Assemblage View of Flooding in an African City Clifford Amoakoa and Emmanuel Frimpong Boamahb aDepartment of Planning, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology Kumasi Ghana; bDepartment of Urban and Regional Planning, Community for Global Health Equity, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Assemblage thinking has emerged over the last two decades as an important Received 28 July 2019 theoretical framework to interrogate emerging complex socio-material phe­ Accepted 27 May 2020 nomenon in cities. This paper deploys the assemblage lens to unpack the KEYWORDS vulnerability of informal communities to flood hazards in an African city. Flood vulnerability; urban Focusing on Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama, the largest informal settlements assemblage; informality; in Accra, Ghana, this paper employs multiple methods including archival Accra; Ghana analysis, institutional surveys, focus group discussions, and mini-workshops to study the processes of exposure and vulnerability to flood hazards in these two communities. We find that being vulnerable to flood hazards in these informal settlements emerges from historically contingent, co- constitutive processes and actants: the city officials’ modernist imaginaries and socio-cultural identities of residents in informal settlements; the social material conditions experienced by residents in these settlements; and the translocal learning networks of government and non-government actors that simultaneously (re)produce oppressive urban planning policies and grassroots resistance to these policies. The paper concludes with a call to urban planners and allied built environment practitioners to understand flood vulnerability as both a process and product of these complex interactions.

1. Introduction Urban floods are among the most devastating hazards affecting many emerging cities, especially in the developing world (Jha et al., 2011a; Parker, 2000, p. 5; Wisner et al., 2004, p. 201). Jha et al. (2011a., p. 3) describe urban flooding as “one of the major natural disasters which disrupts the prosperity, safety, and amenity of residents of human settlements.” The Associated Programme on Flood Management (APFM, 2008), p. 3) attributes urban floods to a “combination of meteorological and hydrological extremes (hydro-meteorological)” but also mentions the influence of human factors in urban flood vulnerability and disasters. The hydro-meteorological factors of urban flood­ ing include extreme rainfall/precipitation, rainstorms, seasonal rainfall extremes, snowmelt, over­ flow of rivers and streams, cyclonic/tidal surges, and accumulation of water in low-lying urban areas (APFM, 2008, pp. 4–9; Few, 2003, p. 44). Another cause of urban flooding discussed in the literature is the process of urbanization itself (Douglas et al., 2008, p. 188; Parker, 1999, p. 38). According to Douglas et al. (2008, p. 188), rapid

CONTACT Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah [email protected] Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Community for Global Health Equity, University at Buffalo, 226 Hayes Hall, Buffalo, NY 14214, USA © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 2 C. AMOAKO AND E. FRIMPONG BOAMAH urbanization and unplanned land use changes increase flood risks by restricting the natural flow of surface runoff. In their study of five African cities of Accra (Ghana), Kampala (Uganda), Lagos (Nigeria), Maputo (Mozambique), and Nairobi (Kenya), Douglas et al. (2008, pp. 194–197) discussed the role of rapid and uncontrolled urbanization in flooding. They indicated that urban flooding is aggravated by the development of slums and informal settlements on floodplains, poor household waste collection practices, and maintenance of drainage channels. Urban population growth, social and economic processes have also been cited as crucial factors in increasing the exposure and vulnerability of urban dwellers/citizens to flood hazards, making them almost endemic in the 21st century (Abhas Jha et al., 2011b; Few, 2003; Parker, 2000). Studies about urbanization and flooding,as discussed by many scholars such as Pelling (1997, 1998, 1999), suggest that analysis of climatic conditions and forecasts is necessary but insufficient in unpacking the vulnerability and resilience of urban areas to flood hazards. Sadly, flood hazards and disasters in Global South cities appear to have been largely ignored or downplayed in global policy debates (Tarhule, 2005) partly due to limited empirical and conceptual approaches to unpack who/ what is involved and how they are involved in the production of flood vulnerabilities in Global South cities. A number of existing studies discuss the strong interconnections among urban flood vulner­ ability, urban poverty, growth of informal settlements, and urban marginalization, especially in the cities of the Global South (e.g., Amoako & Frimpong Boamah, 2015; Douglas et al., 2008; Satterthwaite et al., 2007). In most of these studies, we observe that the process of producing urban flood vulnerabilities in Global South cities is emblematic of what De Landa (2006, p. 5) described as an “assemblage” or the apparent complex relationships among various “people, networks, organizations, as well as, a variety of infrastructural components, from buildings and streets to conduits for matter and energy flows.” This paper deploys an assemblage thinking, discussed over the last few years (e.g., De Landa, 2006; Dovey, 2010, 2012; Farías & Bender, 2009; McFarlane, 2009, 2011a; Wise, 2005), as the conceptual lens to unpack the complex relationships in the production of urban floodvulnerabilities in the Global South. Put differently, we discuss and argue that vulnerability to urban flood hazards in Global South cities is rooted in the complex processes and interactions between environmental changes and socio-political processes explained by their local contexts, history of development and international/global influences. We focus on two informal communities in Accra, Ghana (i.e., Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama), to ground our conceptual discussions in empirics. The remaining sections of the paper are organized as follows; The next section delineates the conceptual landscape of assemblage thinking. In this section, we discuss the defining characteristics of the assemblage concept and highlight the analytical utility of this concept in unpacking the continuously evolving socio-material conditions and vulnerabilities of informal settlements in Global South cities. Then, we apply the assemblage lens to the two case study communities to distil the socio-material context and historically-contingent urban development processes that shape the continuous vulnerability of informal settlement dwellers in Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama. The paper concludes by summarizing the key findings in a matrix and reflecting on the need for urban planners and allied built environment practitioners to understand and specifically address flood vulnerability as both a process and product of complex interactions.

2. Assemblage, Informal Urbanisation and Flood Vulnerability – A Conceptual Framework This paper deploys the assemblage concept as a schema to connect informal urbanization and flood vulnerability, which are the key themes of interest in this paper. The earliest discussion of the PLANNING THEORY & PRACTICE 3 assemblage concept was from the philosophical work of Deleuze and Guattari (1987) in their Book “A Thousand Plateaus- Capitalism and Schizophrenia.” The term “assemblage” was translated from the French word “agencement,” commonly translated as “putting together,” and has been explained as “that which is being assembled” (Wise, 2005). Wise (2005, p. 77) argues that the term is not a static one or as an endpoint of “an arrangement.” Instead, assemblage should be viewed as a “process” of becoming, arranging, organizing or fitting together through various levels of relationships. In this process of becoming, Deleuze and Guattari (1987, p. 257) highlighted not only the processes involved, but also the compositional elements in the process, their continuous relationships, and what “they can do” individually and collectively in the process of becoming an assemblage. In simple terms, an assemblage is conceptualized as a process of transforming, the coming together, and continuously becoming of various related and unrelated parts through complex inter- relationships. An assemblage gives a sense of becoming “a whole” that emerges from a complex process of putting together component parts, which reflects a particular character and has a territory. However, this explanation of an assemblage does not directly refer to the coming together of predetermined parts to form an already conceived structure, nor does it directly relate to the random collection of things or components (Wise, 2005). An assemblage connotes sponta­ neity and order through the complex interactions and interrelationships among components. For instance, DeLanda (2011) explains how water emerges as a whole through the complex interactions and interrelationship among components:

But when two molecules interact chemically, an entirely new entity may emerge, as when hydrogen and oxygen interact to form water. Water has properties that are not possessed by [and hence cannot be reduced to] its component parts: oxygen and hydrogen are gases at room temperature while water is liquid. And water has capacities distinct from those of its parts: adding oxygen or hydrogen to fire fuels it while adding water extinguishes it. (DeLanda, 2011, p. 1, emphasis ours)

From the above example of water, an assemblage is conceived as a collection of heterogeneous elements coming together in diverse or particular relations. On the one hand, the collection of elements (i.e., hydrogen and oxygen) in an assemblage through their relations express a particular character or characteristics (i.e., water); while on the other hand, the individual elements are made up of their peculiar qualities and affects within the assemblage (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). These complex processes and characteristics of assemblages and their element are seen and known through their function and not the mere “existence of essences defining their identity” (De Landa, 2006, p. 26). Thus, the qualities/characteristics of an assemblage and its component elements are observed not only because they exist but also through their continuous functioning as they relate at different temporal and spatial levels. Another characteristic of assemblages is that they create territories. Dovey (2012, p. 353) and McFarlane (2011a, p. 26) suggest that assemblage thinking is a useful analytical frame to re-examine and re-think theories of “place” not only as a spatial location but also as a process of identity formation, becoming and un-becoming. From their view, territories formed through assemblages are far more than spatial locations with predetermined boundaries. These assemblage territories are in constant processes of being made and unmade, which Wise (2005, p. 790) considers as a process of “territolializing, reterritolializing and deterritolializing” of socio-material conditions. Therefore, an assemblage is not produced only as a “spatial category, output or resultant formation” but also as a process of doing, performance, and events (McFarlane, 2011a, p. 26). In describing the usefulness of applying assemblage thinking to territories, scholars have discussed the dynamics, changing structure, and networks within urban territories (McFarlane, 2011b & 2011c; Dovey, 2011, 2012). For 4 C. AMOAKO AND E. FRIMPONG BOAMAH instance, in what he referred to as an urban assemblage, McFarlane (2011c) explains the urban as a process of socio-spatial transformation through the constant “making” and “unmaking” of space through the complex relations among and within its socio-material components (McFarlane, 2011c). Wise (2005) also describes the process of becoming urban as “unfixed, shifting mass of movements, speed and flows in which the various elements come together into a structure, are dismantled and circulate” (p. 79). More importantly, and of particular interest to this paper, McFarlane posits an understanding of cities of the Global South as “learning assemblages” within which (informal) settlements evolve, learn to survive, organize and engage in the socio-economic and political processes and struggles within the urban space. McFarlane (2009, p. 561) refers to these “learning assemblages” as “translo­ cal” because they consist of exchanges of ideas, knowledge, practices, materials and resources which cut across sites. Such “translocal learning assemblages” transcend connections between physical spaces, actors, and social movements as espoused by the actor network theory (see Farías & Bender, 2009; Latour, 2005). Thus, informal urban assemblages are not simply “spatial categories, outputs and resultant formations,” but a process of “doing, performance and events” manifested in urban spaces (McFarlane, 2009, p. 562). In so doing, McFarlane introduces three distinct but interdependent concepts and processes/“aspects” of learning and formation of knowl­ edge: translation, coordination, and dwelling. Translation deals with how knowledge is produced and transferred within and through various operational scales (i.e., local and global) and the forms of power, alliances, agencies, and actors involved in such processes. Coordination denotes the mode of organizing knowledge through institutional and logistical arrangements, including regulatory and legal regimes, urban policies, plans, stakeholder workshops, community mapping, and so on. Dwelling represents learning as changes in the “way of seeing” and responding to changes that arise from the processes of learning and knowledge formation – that is, learning as it is “lived” when knowledge is acquired (McFarlane, 2011a, pp. 16, 21). McFarlane thus advocates for the use of the assemblage concept to explain how informal urbanization is produced and learned as a consistently evolving interaction of uneven components. This, he argues, is an indication that informal communities are not just an outcome or resultant formation of a predetermined process but an “ongoing construction,” continuously being produced through learning and the production of knowledge (McFarlane, 2011b). Even though informality or informal urbanism is increasingly recognized as central to the urbanization process of cities in the Global South, there are conceptual ambiguities, which limit our understanding of the compositional and processual nature of the urban and its emergent outcomes, such as flood vulnerability and poverty. Dovey and King (2011) argue that informal urbanism, unlike terms such as “squatter settlements” or “slum” or “shanty towns,” connotes a multiplicity of socio-material activities and processes that exist outside of formal urban planning regimes (see also Amoako & Frimpong Boamah, 2017; Frimpong Boamah & Walker, 2017, Perlman, 2004, Roy 2005, 2011). This multiplicity of activities and processes is also well captured by McFarlane’s (2011b, p. 658) conceptualization of informal urbanism as a “dwelling process” where various forms of materials are “individually or collectively constructed” to reflect the continually evolving socio-economic conditions. In cities of the Global South, especially in African cities, some scholars highlight that informal urbanism manifests through socio-economic activities within specific spaces (e.g., street hawking, building in hazardous areas) that are often ignored or neglected by formal urban planning regula­ tory regimes (Grant, 2006; Grant & Yankson, 2003). Rather than seeing these areas as neglected by regulatory regimes, Roy (2009, p. 86) argues that the urbanization and informal processes in Global South cities are characterized by a system of “deregulation, unmapping, and exceptionalism” where PLANNING THEORY & PRACTICE 5 urban planning and other regulatory regimes are exercised selectively and opportunistically to declare certain activities, spaces and processes as formal (or legal) and others informal (or illegal). Building on Roy’s (2009) nuanced analysis, others highlight the assembling of factors at multiple scales in driving informal urbanism in African cities, such as the role of discourses and practices by state and non-state actors, inherited colonial planning legacies and regulatory frameworks, and politically contested Western-centric imaginaries and identities of African cities (see Amoako, 2016; Bob-Milliar & Obeng-Odoom, 2011; Frimpong Boamah, 2018; Frimpong Boamah & Amoako, 2020; Obeng-Odoom, 2014; Watson, 2014). The fact that informal urbanism continues to “survive and thrive” (Roy 2011: 224) or remains resilient (Dovey & King, 2011) calls for alternative conceptualiza­ tions, attentive to the assembling of historically contingent, socio-material factors driving informal urbanism and its emergent outcomes, such as forms of urban vulnerabilities (e.g., flooding, pan­ demics, and poverty) and dispossessions (e.g., gentrification and evictions). In a review of McFarlane’s (2011a) work, Dovey (2013) agrees that his innovative concept of translation-coordination-dwelling as a “translocal learning assemblage” is an important framework for re-examining and learning about the issues of informal urbanism and its emergent outcomes in the Global South. In a similar vein, Dovey (2011, 2012)) pushes further the analytical utility of applying the assemblage concept to explaining informal urbanism. For instance, in his paper ‘Uprooting Critical Urbanism,’ Dovey (2011) makes a strong case for the use of assemblage in analyzing informal settlements in the developing world. His argument stems from the concept of multi-scalar considerations that can be used to explain multi-scale urban functions from the level of a building, street, neighborhood, to a district, city, and beyond. He also argues that while most urban discussions of the scalar paradigm usually focus on the hierarchy of scales and the importance of higher scales over lower ones, assemblage thinking instead looks at the dynamic relationships existing and produced between scales both vertically and laterally through socio-spatial changes. According to Dovey (2012, p. 357) informal urban areas can be perceived as “complex adaptive systems” produced through dynamic relationships between formal and informal properties, ima­ ginaries, discourses, practices, and spaces at different scales. In the context of this paper, the use of the assemblage lens to discuss flood vulnerability in informal communities requires two essential considerations; First, an analysis of flood vulnerability and responses among poor urban communities in Accra must be seen as an emerging socio- material phenomenon involving the dynamic political-economic growth processes at both local and translocal levels within which the city’s growth is taking place. That is, the link between urban informality and flood vulnerability must be thought of as an emerging multiplicity of outcomes and relationships within which various forms of vulnerabilities are (co)produced and (re)produced. Finally, analyzing the assemblage of flood vulnerability must also consider the different socio- material conditions, institutional networks, and political components whose constant interdepen­ dencies produce and are produced by flood vulnerability and community responses. For instance, assemblage thinking of flood vulnerability must unearth: the materiality of informal housing, infrastructure, housing materials, drainage systems; the sociality of local-global learning networks, access to livelihood, and resources; and the institutional arrangements of urban governance, policies, legal and regulatory frameworks. All these components or elements have different and multiple characteristics which continually inform the becoming or assemblage of informal urbaniza­ tion and flood vulnerability. Next, we consider these two essential considerations to inform our understanding of flood vulnerability among dwellers in two informal settlements in Accra, Ghana. 6 C. AMOAKO AND E. FRIMPONG BOAMAH

3. Study Contexts, Method and Data This study focuses on two ‘twin’ settlements, Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama, in Accra, Ghana (see Figure 1). Accra is the capital and largest city in Ghana, which has grown from less than 10 square kilometers in the 1870s to its current size of about 300 square kilometers (Grant & Yankson, 2003; Rain et al., 2011). With an estimated population of 3.3 million, which is growing at a rate of 4.3% per annum (Accra Metropolitan Assembly [AMA], 2011; Afenah, 2009), Accra’s rate of urbanization presents many challenges to the city, including perennial flooding and loss of viable farmland for urban food production (Amoako & Frimpong Boamah, 2015; Frick-Trzebitzky et al., 2017; Yankson et al., 2017, Frimpong Boamah et al., 2020). The two informal communities, Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama, which cover both indigenous Ga1 and non-indigenous2 migrant communities, represent the largest informal settlements in Accra and are especially vulnerable to floodincidents (Amoako, 2016; Douglas et al., 2008). Surrounded by the three main traditional markets, an industrial zone, a railway station, the Odaw River and the Korle Lagoon, Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama sit within one of the most economically and ecologically sensitive locations in the city, but also the most neglected. These communities have poor sanitation and water facilities, are occupied mostly by low-income residents, and experience perennial flooding from the Lagoon and the Odaw River (Afenah, 2012; Amoako & Frimpong Boamah, 2015; Boadi & Kuitunen, 2002). Again, exposed to over 15% of e-waste (electronic waste) imports into Africa from Europe and the Americas (Arguello et al., 2013; Grant & Oteng-Ababio, 2012;

Figure 1. Location of study communities in Accra. PLANNING THEORY & PRACTICE 7

Osei-Boateng & Ampratwum, 2011), frequent fire outbreaks (Paller, 2019), and other environmental hazards, Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama have come under constant threats of evictions from city authorities, fuelled by a section of the local media (Bob-Milliar & Obeng-Odoom, 2011; Gillespie, 2016; Grant, 2006). For more than a decade, affected residents, with the support of local and international nongovernment organizations (NGOs), have, to some extent, been able to resist forced evictions. Still, these resistance efforts seem ineffective against residents’ exposure and vulnerability to flood hazards, e-waste and poor environmental health conditions (See Figure 2). We interrogate how multiple socio-material components assemble to explain the vulnerability of residents to flood hazards in these two communities. A three-stage analytical process was employed to adequately delineate the compositional elements and their interactions in shaping the flood vulnerability of these two settlements. First, we conducted an in-depth archival analysis of official government reports and published scholarly works to understand (1) the settlement history of both communities, (2) previous and current socio- economic, political, and flood conditions in both communities; and (3) efforts and challenges to address flooding and other undesired conditions in these communities, with specific emphasis on flood mitigation effortsand challenges. As part of this firststage, we developed an understanding of

Figure 2. Contextual map of Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama. 8 C. AMOAKO AND E. FRIMPONG BOAMAH historically-contingent processes, outcomes, and compositional elements that seem to have shaped the flooding and other socio-material conditions in these two communities. We also were able to identify, in addition to informal residents, NGOs and government actors who constitute a network of political actors and processes that seem to shape the emergence of translocal learning and resistance assemblages within these two communities. These actors were the focus in the second stage of the three-stage analytical process. In the second stage, we conducted fieldwork in Accra, which involved focus group sessions with residents in Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama, and in-depth interviews with 40 institutional actors. In the focus group sessions, two sessions were organized in each community (n = 25 participants on average in each session per each focus group session). Discussions in these sessions focused on the following: perceptions, experiences and local knowledge of causes and impacts of flooding in the communities, factors informing residents’ vulnerability to flood hazards, community responses during and after flood incidents, the role of social capital in pre, during and post-impact activities that helped in mitigating the impacts of flood hazards, and residents’ assessments of flood inter­ ventions by government and NGOs in their communities. These focus group sessions were com­ plemented by interviews with forty institutional actors, representing 18 institutions (n = 25 government officials, and 15 non-governmental stakeholders, including NGOs and key community leaders). These interviews focused on (1) historical origins of and socio-political processes and tensions within these two informal communities, (2) opinions on why these settlements are considered informal and the resultant political-economic and social implications of viewing these settlements as informal, (3) what informs the vulnerability of these settlements to flooding, and (4) the attitude of the state and other actors towards the vulnerability of these two communities to flood hazards. In these interviews, some participants shared several policy documents relevant to the study, which were reviewed in addition to the data collected from the focus group sessions and interviews. Most of these shared documents provided explanations of institutional responses to flood hazards in Accra, especially institutional attitude and posture or inertia towards informal settlements in the city. The third and final stage involved data analysis and triangulation of results. Interview transcripts and shared documents were coded using the qualitative software package, NVivo 10. Drawing from LeCompte’s (2000) suggestion on how to analyze qualitative data, we first coded multiple texts to identify frequency, omission, and declaration of statements relevant to the research questions. The coding was performed iteratively and inductively, in a similar way to the grounded theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), which allowed us to compare and contrast multiple coded statements until there was an emerging pattern of themes. We summarized these themes into major results and findings, which was shared with residents in Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama through two mini- workshops (n = 17 participants in each workshop). Some institutional actors were also asked to comment on some of the findings through either email or in-person interviews (n = 20 invited institutional actors), but only 13 responded with comments through email (n = 10) and in-person interview (n = 3). Next, we present the emerging themes on the compositional socio-material elements that shape the vulnerabilities of these two informal communities to flood hazards.

4. Results and Findings We present our results and findings under two overlapping discussions. First, we discuss the historically-contingent processes that led to the formation of these so-called informal communities. It is difficult, if not impossible, to understand the compositional elements animating the PLANNING THEORY & PRACTICE 9 vulnerability of these settlements to flood hazards without situating the discussions within the historically contingent, political, urban planning, resettlement, and economic processes that pro­ duce and reproduce these two settlements. Second, and finally, we distil from these historically contingent processes three specific assembling processes shaping the vulnerability of these two settlements to flood hazards.

4.1. Becoming Informal and Vulnerable: Assembling Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama This sub-section discusses how the two communities have been assembled and “territorialized” (Dovey, 2012; McFarlane, 2011c) over the years in producing and shaping residents’ vulnerability to flood hazards. The twin settlements first began with Agbogbloshie, which grew, exceeded its boundaries, and led to the second settlement, Old Fadama. Agbogbloshie dates back to the period before the 1930s, when it was a part of the first “Native Town”3 in the colonial capital of Accra under the then British colonial administration (Grant & Yankson, 2003). The community evolved as a small Ga4 village. The first inhabitants were believed to have moved from the cluster of coastal Ga communities around the Ga Mashie5 area in order to trade with the early European merchants. As a native town in the colonial era, the area was adjacent to a well-structured and planned European suburb and central business district. Two respondents explained this history in our interviews:

Long before the European sailors came to our shores; our fathers were fishing with big canoes and could travel more than 10 miles into the sea for fishing . . . but when the European merchants came we started trading into the hinterlands. (Field interview at Agbogbloshie, Accra, June 2017)

History has it that in the olden days, “Abgolushie” [as this community was known at the time] was the place where Ga chiefs came to rest during their festivals and vacations. It was known to be a safe and cool place for relaxing. That is how this community evolved around the Agbolu stream in the history of our forefathers. (Field interview at Agbogbloshie, Accra, June 2017) The socio-cultural attachments to Agbogbloshie made it difficultfor the Europeans to plan this area. These attachments revolved around the Korle Lagoon and its tributaries, which was seen as sacred to the indigenes; hence, they had to be protected for rituals at the beginning and end of each fishing season. The planning of Agbogbloshie was therefore limited, and at some point, resisted even though this native town shared boundaries with the planned European parts of the city (Grant, 2006, p. 8). According to Grant and Yankson (2003, p. 67), the colonial government’s neglect of and the resistance of indigenes in this area “led to a crowded, cluttered and congested environment with poor structures and unhealthy conditions.” The result manifested in the growth of Old Fadama over the years, driven by government and non-government residential, commercial, and industrial processes, which had implications for population and housing densities and encroachments within the Korle lagoon catchment area, and the resultant vulnerability of residents to flood hazards. City officials at the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) mentioned that illegal developments spilled over from Agbogbloshie, and gave rise to Old Fadama in the early 1980s. Old Fadama is a squatter settlement located on state land acquired compulsorily by the Government of Ghana in 1961 for what it claimed to be the Korle Lagoon Development project (Grant, 2006, p. 9). The project was abandoned after the military overthrow of Ghana’s first postcolonial government in 1966. Old Fadama was first settled in 1981 by new rural-urban migrants, most of whom were from northern Ghana (Farouk & Owusu, 2012). According to officials interviewed at the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), the initial settlers were ignored by city authorities under the pretext that the settlements “were temporary and that they will go away due to the lack of basic household 10 C. AMOAKO AND E. FRIMPONG BOAMAH infrastructure and services” (stakeholder interview, Accra, July 2017). Again, an officialinterviewed at the Accra Metropolitan Physical Planning department also mentioned the influx of Ghanaian returnees deported from Nigeria in the early 1980s specifically, between 1981 and 1983 as among the first to have settled at Old Fadama. Old Fadama and Agbogbloshie merged and grew till the 1990s when a series of government urban planning and resettlement policies reinforced the conditions that exacerbated the vulner­ ability of these two settlements to flood and other hazards. In 1991, to prepare the city for the Non- aligned Movement Conference (NAM Conference), the government embarked on an urban devel­ opment program to de-congest Accra and rid it of street hawkers, which included relocating these hawkers and petty traders to Old Fadama (COHRE, 2004). This, according to the officials of the local NGOs in the community and some officials of the Land Use and Spatial Planning Authority (LUSPA),6 marked “what appears like the first official endorsement of the otherwise illegal settlement” (stakeholder interview, Accra, July 2017). In 1993, the AMA also relocated a yam market at Old Fadama, which grew into a major wholesale food market, including yams, tomatoes, and onions from northern Ghana and a neighboring country, Burkina Faso. Again, this twin settlement and the surrounding Korle Lagoon area became a hub for metal and electronic waste, which has turned this twin informal settlement into a key scrap and fabrication market in the West African Sub-region, receiving approximately 15% of all e-waste shipped into Africa from Europe and North America (Boateng, 2011, p. 62). Later in 1994, the Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama area received yet another significant population influx when the Ghanaian government relocated displaced migrants fleeing the Konkonmba-Nanumba-Dagomba ethnic conflict in the northern part of Ghana.7 The above-discussed historically contingent, political, urban planning, resettlement, and eco­ nomic processes underlie the compositional alignment and realignment of factors that shape the flood vulnerability of residents in Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama. For instance, increasing popula­ tion and housing densities, dumping of waste (especially e-waste) in and along the Korle Lagoon and its tributaries, apparent failure of colonial and postcolonial efforts to plan the twin settlement area, and local resistance to planning efforts, speak to the dynamic growth processes that (re) produce flood hazards in these two informal communities. Figure 3 is a diagrammatic representa­ tion of some of the above-discussed historically contingent processes that must be accounted for in explaining the continuous growth and vulnerability of Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama to flood hazards. In the next section of the paper, we delineate three specific assembling processes emanat­ ing from this historically contingent process in shaping the vulnerability of these two settlements to flood hazards.

4.2. Becoming Vulnerable to Flood Hazards in Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama Vulnerability to flood hazards in Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama is a continuous process of being vulnerable, the manifestation of three interacting and reinforcing compositional elements: urban imaginaries and identities of informal settlements; socio-material conditions; and translocal learning assemblages of oppression and resistance. First, emanating from the above-discussed historically contingent processes, are the informal and illegal imaginaries and identities used to characterize Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama. On the one hand, government officials view these two settlements as a homogenous and contiguous swath of informal and illegal areas, which will remain vulnerable to flood hazards unless removed from the city’s landscape. On the other hand, residents of both settlements refuse and contest these illegal and informal labels because some residents identify as (1) indigenes who have historical, cultural PLANNING THEORY & PRACTICE 11

Figure 3. The assemblage of factors and processes constituting the emergence of Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama as informal, flood-vulnerable settlements in Accra, Ghana.

and ethnic identities attached to these settlements, (2) political migrants (i.e., migrants who fled from ethnic conflicts in the northern part of Ghana), or (3) economic migrants (i.e., traders who were resettled by the government). Even though officials of the city’s Metropolitan Physical Planning Department seem to recognize these multiple identities of residents in these two settlements, they still hold on to this informal-illegal imaginary used to characterize this twin settlement. According to these officials, both communities are a nuisance, which must be removed and cleaned through “eviction, relocation or redevelopment” (stakeholder interview, Accra, July 2017). The Daily Graphic reported on August 15 2018 that city officials planned to demolish 1800 structures in Agbogbloshie with the excuse, “We want to move tomato sellers who ply their trade in very deplorable conditions from the Agbogbloshie Market . . . ” (Statement made by the Public Relations Officer of the AMA, 12 C. AMOAKO AND E. FRIMPONG BOAMAH

Daily Graphic report by Ngnenbe, 2018). This statement was contested by residents when their spokesperson noted, “ . . . we will not allow anyone to come and demolish our homes because we are not illegal settlers . . . they [city officials] must as well kill all of us because we will not leave” (statement made by Mr Robert Nii Ashie, Daily Graphic report by Ngnenbe, 2018). Residents lamented the use of words such as “deplorable conditions,” “clean areas,” “dirty areas,” “beautiful city” in the discourses of city officials during focus group sessions:

. . . they [city officials] will not come for the garbage and make it look like we enjoy living in dirt (Agbogbloshie resident during focus group session, June 2017)

The AMA should do their job and stop blaming us as if we are not citizens of Ghana. We need gutters, refuse bins, and frequent collection of refuse . . . Are we asking for too much? (Old Fadama resident during focus group session, June 2017)

See, you [researcher] are seeking our views on what can be done, but they [city officials] don’t seem to care about our views. They get up and only think about getting rid of us to make Accra clean, but they will come for us ‘dirty’ votes during elections, right? (Old Fadama resident during focus group session, June 2017).

By holding on to this informal-illegal imaginary, city officials justify their decisions to evict these residents by citing residents’ vulnerability to flood hazards. Thus, the misalignment between two elements, how the city officials view these two communities (imaginary) and how the residents view themselves (multiplicity of residents’ identities) reinforces why (1) city officials are unable to intervene in addressing the flood hazards facing these communities appropriately, and (2) residents continue to live in these flood-prone settlements and resist all forms of eviction attempts by the government. Second, this imaginary-identify misalignment shapes and is also shaped by the socio-material conditions within these two settlements. These conditions manifest through (1) government’s (in) actions, which have deprived these communities of the needed socio-infrastructure support, and (2) residents’ limited capacity or unwillingness to invest in permanent housing and infrastructure in their communities. First, as discussed earlier, since the 1960s, the Government of Ghana engaged in specific activities that directly or indirectly led to increased housing and population densities as well as encroachment on flood plains within Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama. However, the government failed to engage in any meaningful urban planning interventions prior to engaging in these specific activities. For instance, the government in the 1960s acquired lands within and around these two communities to engage in the Korle Lagoon Ecological Restoration Project (KLERP), which was meant to:

Restore the lagoon to its natural ecology and realign the lagoon to improve its hydrological efficiency to increase the flow of the water through the lagoon, and finally to develop it into a major tourist attraction . . . (Boadi & Kuitunen, 2002, p. 308)

The project did not proceed as planned, and some of the acquired lands were subsequently leased out for industrial development. Again, and as discussed earlier, in the 1990s the government relocated street hawkers, yam traders, and displaced migrants to this twin settlement; somehow, this same government managed not to see or to intervene when this twin settlement and the Korle Lagoon were emerging as e-waste sites. The resultant socio-material conditions (see Figure 2) from such government (in)actions include poor drainage conditions, poor water and sanitation facilities, dumping of waste (especially e-waste) in and along existing water resources, increasing housing and population densities, and increase in crime, earning this twin area the biblical name, ‘Sodom and PLANNING THEORY & PRACTICE 13

Gomorrah.’ The rapid encroachment and spatial expansion of Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama exposes residents to flooding from the Korle Lagoon and the Odaw River. During the focus group sessions, participants blamed their flood vulnerability on the series of government actions in these communities (e.g., construction of railway lines, three big markets, an industrial hub, tourism area and buffer zones to protect the Korle Lagoon). An elected representative puts it this way:

This community [Old Fadama] . . . has suffered too many compulsory acquisition under various govern­ ments . . . there is no land to develop houses not to talk of other communal facilities. Now there are so many migrants coming to share the already used up lands . . . the government chooses to evict us instead of making sure that we are provided with the needed infrastructure and support services to deal with the flood hazards we experience each year. (stakeholder interview, Accra, July 2017)

Third, and finally,through such government (in)actions, we see the emergence of translocal learning assemblages of oppression and resistance. These translocal learning assemblages of oppression manifest through the government’s adoption of global neoliberal discourse of modernizing Accra into a Millennium City (Bob-Milliar & Obeng-Odoom, 2011; Grant, 2009). The government’s moder­ nization discourse was captured in two ways by scholars:

At the beginning of its term, the [NPP] government appointed a Ghanaian who was based in the United States to be the Mayor of Accra (Ayee & Crook, 2003, p. 17). According to Ayee and Crook (2003), the appointment of a mayor with “American experience” was aimed at ensuring that Accra would be managed in ways that would make it bear some semblance of a typical American city. In 2003, the government expanded the functions of the Ministry of Tourism to include the “modernization of the capital city. (Bob-Milliar & Obeng-Odoom, 2011, pp. 271–272)

For his part, the Mayor of Accra has perhaps struck a more militant pose in his attempts at beautifying Accra. At a press conference there he gave notice to hawkers and people dwelling in ‘illegal’ structures to leave before 15 June 2009 . . . A clean city, in the perceived wisdom of these two mayors [mayors of Accra and Kumasi], would attract many businesses. (Obeng-Odoom, 2009)

The first quote by Bob-Milliar and Obeng-Odoom (2011) refers to Mr. Stanley Nii Adjiri Blankson (mayor of Accra from 2004 to 2009) and the second quote by Obeng-Odoom (2009) refers to Mr. Alfred Oko Vanderpuije (mayor of Accra from 2009 to 2016). Mr. Adjiri Blankson was appointed by the then New Patriotic Party (NPP) government and Mr. Vanderpuije was appointed by the then National Democratic Congress (NDC) government. Both the NPP and NDC governments appointed transnational elites as mayors, who were considered to have gained transnational knowledge, experience, and possibly, were also connected to other transnational experts by virtue of their ‘American experience.’ The modernization vision for Accra was, therefore, to be achieved through the translocal assembling of specific individuals (i.e., mayors and experts) with specific transnational knowledge, experience, and connections that were capable of ridding Accra of ‘unclean and illegal’ people and places such as the residents and settlements of Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama. The resulting urban planning policies, such as decongestion and demolishing exercises, were oppressive to street vendors, petty traders, and residents in informal settlements. The emergence of a translocal assemblage of oppressive urban planning policies encountered an emerging translocal assemblage of resistance efforts. In direct response to the government’s oppressive urban planning policies, several non-state actors are assembling to resist these policies, and also helping residents of Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama to deal with their vulnerability to flood hazards. Some of these organizations include: Landlords’ Associations (Association of property owners), People’s Dialogue, Ghana Youth Porters Association (GYPA), Land for Life, Centre for Public Interest Law (CEPIL) and Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE). Cudjoe et al. 14 C. AMOAKO AND E. FRIMPONG BOAMAH

(2014, p. 371) also mention other emerging grassroots associations involving “fishermen and fish dealers, church members, market women/petty traders, queen mothers and ethnic groups.” Even though many of these non-state actors are not officially registered and recognized, their continuous evolution and engagements with city authorities and state institutions, “make” and “unmake” new territories for new engagements. These reflect C. McFarlane’s (2011b) view of an “ongoing con­ struction” continuously being (re)produced through learning and the (re)production of knowledge. For instance, our interview with a local opinion leader at Old Fadama revealed that,

There are several institutions working in Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama area . . . these include commu­ nity based and international NGOs . . . The NGOs also include: Peoples Dialogue on Human Settlements (PD), Ghana Federation of the Urban Poor (GHAFUP), Shark/Slum Dwellers International (SDI) and a host of others . . . different groups are formed always based on the need we have. (stakeholder interview, Accra, July 2017)

There are alliances at local and transnational organizations to help residents in Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama. Both communities have received support from and built collaborations with interna­ tional agencies such as the UN Habitat, Slum/Shack Dwellers International, Centre for Housing Rights and Eviction (COHRE) and Centre for Public Interest Law (CEPIL) in building physical, social and political resilience against flood vulnerability and forced eviction threats by the government. Grant (2009, p. 111) reports how, in 2004, a “delegation of four slum dwellers from Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama” with the support of a local NGO travelled to Nairobi, Kenya to meet and learn from residents of Kibera, which is arguably the largest slum or informal settlement in Africa. Equipped with the international knowledge of slum rehabilitation, these “slum delegates” returned as ambas­ sadors and community leaders to fight for their right to live in the city of Accra. For example, when asked why they have not instead encouraged residents in these settlements to go back to their villages and hometowns, the Executive Director of the People’s Dialogue on Human Settlement had this to say:

Where do they go? Are they not Ghanaians who are also seeking better economic opportunities? If you want them to go, then there should be similar or better socio-economic conditions in those areas as well . . . (stakeholder interview, Accra, July 2017)

In our field interviews, we asked some participants what they have learned or been educated about, and a participant averred:

. . . These institutions and non-profit organizations educate us on what to do during flood hazards and help us engage with the AMA on our security of tenure . . . there are others that support us with infrastructure and housing development through housing loans. (stakeholder interview, Accra, July 2017)

In the view of a community representative:

These institutions educate members of the community about the risks of flooding and the potential impacts or consequences of not responding appropriately. They are also involved in the distribution of relief items and rehabilitation/counselling of flood victims. Some of these institutions have also been at the forefront in advocating for improvement in security of land tenure as well as improved housing, sanitation and living conditions in this community. (stakeholder interview, Accra, July 2017)

A property owner in Agbogbloshie answered a question on how such community-based activities by NGOs have helped residents in coping with flood hazards. Her answer was,

Their engagements with various households have also built the households’ confidence in planning and responding to flood hazards. At the community level they help us plan and implement communal PLANNING THEORY & PRACTICE 15

actions such as cleaning some areas known to be very prone to flood hazards, thereby taking advantage to create awareness on hazard zones in the community. These virtually serve as an early warning system for households in parts of the community. Some of these institutions also provide assistance through livelihood empowerment [financial capital to poor households to start little businesses]. This has the objective of dealing with poverty – which is the root cause of our being here. (stakeholder interview, Accra, July 2017)

The translocal learning assemblages of resistance efforts emerge through the co-constitution of local and trans-scalar actors, discourses, and actions/practices that empowered residents to contest evictions by city authorities and also engage in self-help initiatives against flood vulnerability. Earlier highlighted in the stakeholder interviews, the coming together of local and trans-scalar actors facilitated an assemblage of discourses, such as rights-based and learning-based discourses that contested the state’s modernist (clean, beautiful, Millennium) city discourses and imaginaries through street protests and litigations (see Afenah, 2009; COHRE, 2004) on the one hand. On the other hand, such assemblages of rights-based and learning-based discourses facilitated local self- help initiatives. For instance, the SDI trained residents in this twin settlement to conduct commu­ nity-based profiling of residents to better negotiate and inform the policy decisions of city autho­ rities, and also empowered residents economically through a savings and loans program to help residents improve on their housing and other neighborhood conditions that make them vulnerable to flooding (see Afenah, 2009; Farouk & Owusu, 2012; Grant, 2006). These translocal learning assemblages of discourses and practices helped residents of Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama to engage in the translation of legal and socio-economic knowledge, produced and transferred at various global and local scales, the coordination of such knowledge through community profiling mapping, street protests, institutional negotiations with city authorities, and litigations, and finally, dwelling with such knowledge through everyday lived and embodied experiences of being informal and vulnerable to flooding. These resistance effortsnotwithstanding, an assemblage lens informs us that nothing is fixed;the topographies of the urban are constantly being made and unmade, territorialized and reterritor­ ialized as relations of exteriority and compositional alignments shift (De Landa, 2006; McFarlane, 2009; Wise, 2005). Thus, these translocal learning assemblages in Old Fadama and Agbogbloshie have not been fixed,but are gradually dismantling over the years as actors become less active. There are also shifts and misalignments in actors’ resources, visions and interests, and the city government has experienced regime shifts over the years (see Frimpong Boamah & Arnold, Forthcoming). As Old Fadama and Agbogbloshie and other areas continue to experience perennial flooding each year, residents are still becoming vulnerable to flood hazards and face threats of eviction. But the contours of flood vulnerability and eviction threats within informal settlements in Accra are a continuous assembling process of socio-political contestations as new actors, imaginaries, discourses (re) assemble at multiple scales over time. From the discussions so far, becoming vulnerable to flood hazards in Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama is an emergent phenomenon. That is, being vulnerable to flood hazards in these two informal settlements emerges from the complex interactions of urban imaginaries and identities of informal settlements, the social material conditions experienced by residents in these informal settlements, and the translocal learning networks of government and non-government actors that simultaneously create oppressive urban planning policies and grassroots resistance to these policies. In some respects, being vulnerable to flood hazards, in the case of informal residents, also means learning to be resilient. Contrary to the held view that these informal communities are chaotic and ungovernable (see Hall & Pfeiffer, 2000) and vulnerable victims of flood hazards 16 C. AMOAKO AND E. FRIMPONG BOAMAH

(Cannon, 2000; D. J. Parker, 2000; D Parker, 1999; Wisner et al., 2004), the case of Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama reveal emerging translocal social and political networks, which is helping these communities address their vulnerability to flood and other hazards. Thus, Grant (2006, p. 14) argues that within these informal communities, there is the constant emergence of established “commu­ nity [development] frameworks not legible to the formal policy community” but structured to provide appropriate responses to social, political and environmental threats.

5. Reflections and Conclusion This paper employed the assemblage lens to unpack the vulnerability of informal communities to flood hazards in an African city. It first discussed the conceptual landscape of the assemblage concept, focusing on how the concept helps us think through socio-material phenomena within cities as emerging from the complex interactions among multiple components. Such a view allows us to understand the processual nature of a phenomenon, and the need to understand the continuous becoming of such phenomenon as its constitutive components territorialize, reterritor­ ialize and deterritorialize to form multiple emerging phenomena. We employed this lens to distil the processual and constitutive nature of floodhazards in two informal communities, Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama, in Accra, Ghana. In our analysis, we highlighted the constitutive elements animating the vulnerability of residents to flood hazards. Our analysis suggests that being vulnerable to flood hazards in these informal settlements emerges from complex interactions of urban imaginaries and identities of informal settlements, the social material conditions experienced by residents in these settlements, and the translocal learning networks of government and non-government actors that simultaneously (re)produce oppressive urban planning policies and grassroots resistance to these policies (see summary in Table 1). The analysis conducted herein is situated within emerging literature and discussions about informality as the “emergent effect of,” the coming together of various components of the city put forward by McFarlane (2011c), Dovey (2011), Farias (2010), De Landa (2006) and Wise (2005). Specifically, our analysis identifies the components and their relational processes, (re)producing urban informality and flood vulnerability in Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama. These components and their relational processes, summarized in Table 1, draw on the historical developments of the study areas, the role of state and non-state actors and their alliances, and the role of non-human actants (e.g., e-wastes), and the community ties that solidify community life. The interactions among and within these elements connote indeterminacy, emergence, becoming, processuality, and socio- materiality of a phenomenon (McFarlane, 2011c, p. 206). The current socio-political and physical structures of Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama can, therefore, not be determined just as a “resultant formation” but an emerging historical process in “multiple temporalities and possibilities” (see McFarlane, 2011c, p. 206). Thus, becoming informal and vulnerable to flood hazards in Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama is an emerging assemblage. Some of the “products,” “affects” or “possibilities” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; De Landa, 2006; Wise, 2005) of the assemblage that has led to flood vulnerability of the area include: compulsory land acquisitions, leading to illegal and unplanned spillover and occupation on hazardous locations; incremental building in waterways or on flood plains using inferior and temporary materials; dumping of solid waste into the lagoon; preventing the successful completion of the Korle Lagoon Ecological Restoration Project and the perennial overflow of the Kore Lagoon and the inability of state and city institutions to handle flood hazards in the area. PLANNING THEORY & PRACTICE 17

Table 1. Assembling of factors and processes in becoming flood vulnerable in Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama, Accra. Components of becoming vulnerable to flood hazards How the components manifest in Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama (1) Historically contingent, political, urban planning, (1) Evolution of both cities as unplanned settlements near planned colonial resettlement, and economic processes settlements (2) Resistance of indigenes against colonial attempts to plan Agbogbloshie especially due to socio-cultural attachments to the Korle Lagoon (3) Compulsory state acquisition of parts of Agbogbloshie for the Korle Lagoon Development project (4) State neglect of acquired land at Agbogbloshie (5) Influx of migrants to this area: rural-urban migrants, Ghanaian returnees from Nigeria (6) Government’s actions of resettling people in Agbogbloshie to Old Fadama: street hawkers, yam sellers, and migrants fleeing conflicts in the northern part of Ghana (7) Government’s inactions of not planning the settlements before settling people in these settlements; government’s convenient neglect of not adequately tackling the dumping of metal and e-waste in the two set­ tlements and in the waterbodies (2) Imaginary and multiple identities associated (1) Government’s view of these settlements as informal and illegal with the two settlements (2) Residents view of themselves as legal because of their multiple identities and attachments to the settlements as indigenes, political migrants, and economic migrants (3) Socio-material conditions within these (1) Government’s actions and inactions, which have deprived these commu­ settlements nities of the needed socio-infrastructure support (e.g., poor drainage, poor water and sanitation facilities) (2) Residents’ limited capacity and/or unwillingness to invest in permanent housing and infrastructure support in these communities (4) Translocal learning assemblages of oppression (1) Oppressive urban planning policies (e.g., decongestion and demolishing and resistance exercises) through city modernization views of transnational elites serving as city mayors with modernist ‘American experience, knowledge, and connections to experts.’ (2) Resistance to these oppressive policies through local-global collaborations among registered and unregistered community groups, individuals, and transnational advocacy organizations.

Assemblage thinking, as an emerging concept in urban research, speaks to the need for urban planners and built environment practitioners and researchers to consider the process and product of city-making. Specifically, and particularly for Global South scholars and practitioners, this concept draws attention to urban informality and inherent vulnerabilities as both process and product of evolving and interacting social, economic, and political actants and processes. An attempt to address a specific vulnerability (e.g., flood hazards), without understanding the direct and indirect processes shaping such vulnerabilities could be naïve at best. This concept and its analytical usefulness also draws attention to the seminal work of Rittel and Webber (1973), who admonished planners and allied professionals to consider the “wicked” nature of the problems we are trying to solve. Becoming vulnerable to flooding in Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama cannot be addressed through a one-size-fits-all planning intervention. The processes and evolving factors (re)producing the city and flood vulnerability must be understood and accounted for in proposed planning interventions; otherwise, we risk solving one problem and creating others.

Notes

1. Local names given to the original inhabitants and owners of lands in Accra. 18 C. AMOAKO AND E. FRIMPONG BOAMAH

2. Migrant residents of informal settlements from other parts of Ghana and West Africa. 3. The indigenous settlements where residents lived during the colonial era. 4. Ethnic name for the original indigenes of Accra. 5. The cluster of Ga communities believed to be where the city of Accra started in 1877 after the British colonial government relocated the capital of the then Gold Coast (now Ghana) from Cape Coast to Accra, the current capital of Ghana. 6. LUSPA is the national head office for all physical planning departments at metropolitan and city levels. 7. A bloody ethnic war among three tribes namely Konkomba, Nanumba and Dagomba in the Northern Region of Ghana, which was also known as “the Guinea Fowl war” (See Farouk & Owusu, 2012, p. 47).

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Editors, Professors Mee Kam Ng and Heather Campbell, and the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. All errors and omissions are ours.

Disclosure Statement

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

This work was supported (in part) by the Community of Global Health Equity, University at Buffalo.

Authors’ Contribution

The authors contributed equally to the drafting and revision of the manuscript. The authorship names are arranged in alphabetical order.

Notes on contributors

Clifford Amoako (PhD), is a senior lecturer at the Department of Planning, KNUST, Kumasi, Ghana. He is a Development Planner with a particular interest in Urban Development, Transportation and Environmental Planning, and Disaster Management. His current research interests include development planning, human vulnerability, and responses to natural hazards in the Global South. Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah (PhD), holds a joint faculty appointment with the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and the Community for Global Health Equity. As an interdisciplinary scholar, he deploys multiple theoretical and methodological lenses to interrogate issues related to urban health and wellbeing, public policy, environmental governance, food-water-land nexus, and sustainable urbanism in Global South and North countries.

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