Planning for Resilient Small and Medium-Sized Cities in Ghana

Planning for Resilient Small and Medium-Sized Cities in Ghana explores the resilience and planning dynamics and complexities of rapid urban transitions in Ghana’s small and medium-sized cities (SMCs) and their implications for Africa and the Global South.

The book argues that Ghana’s urban future may have more to do with the steady growth of SMCs, where urban consolidation is gradually taking a foothold. Recognizing that Ghana’s primary cities are well known to be socio-ecological hotspots of risk, reactive urban planning, and entrenched inequalities of alarming proportions, this book asks: would SMCs follow these troubling realities and trajectories in large cities or leapfrog to resilient futures that work for all? Through a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, the contributions emphasize the need for integrated planning strategies to navigate socio-ecological challenges and opportunities that SMCs face in terms of infrastructure, governance, and climate resilience.

By centering overlooked and understudied SMCs in Ghana’s urban scholarship, this book realigns resilience planning to the spaces and places emerging as the frontiers of socio-ecological crises. It will be of interest to students and researchers of city and regional planning, urban studies, geography, environmental studies and science, public policy, development studies, and public health, as well as urban planners, community development practitioners, geographers, environmental, disaster, and resilient personnel, and policymakers.

Stephen Kofi Diko, PhD, is an assistant professor at the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of Memphis. His research focuses on sustainable urban development and policy, emphasizing how communities can overcome, adapt, and be resilient to factors that engender their vulnerabilities and impoverishment. His research themes encompass climate mainstreaming, adaptation and resilience, urban green spaces, flooding, informality, community economic development, plan quality assessments, and urban planning awareness. He explores these interests in both local and international contexts.

Seth Asare Okyere, PhD, is a visiting lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, and an adjunct associate professor at the Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, Japan. His work sits at the intersection of social equity, resilience, and sustainability to cross-pollinate ideas for just and sustainable communities. The breadth and depth of his professional experiences span institutions and communities in Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America.

Stephen Leonard Mensah, MPhil, is a PhD candidate and critical urban research fellow at the University of Memphis. He is a community-focused interdisciplinary scholar with research interests in urban and community sustainable development from multidimensional perspectives such as social equity, circularity, sustainability, resilience, and policy design.

Louis Kusi Frimpong, PhD, is a lecturer at the Department of Geography and Earth Science, University of Environment and Sustainable Development, Ghana. His research interests include urban sustainability, environmental planning and sustainability, urban informality, lived experiences of informal settlement dwellers, and grassroots mobilization for community (re)vitalization and community development.