This paper examines the growth trajectories of the city of Tamale, Ghana, using secondary data and archival material. It profiles the colonial planning experiences in the city and the way in which planning practices influenced collective actions in the pro-poor housing sector. The analyses show that at its founding in the early part of the 20th century, Tamale had a considerably large proportion of indigenous population whose housing practices fell beyond the scope of formal housing and planning regulations. Thus, moving people for purposes of redeveloping old indigenous housing clusters was the defining feature of colonial urban planning practices in the city. It is argued in this paper that the fragmented planning strategy adopted for the colonial city created an agglomeration of suburbs with poorly articulated spatial connectivity and a pattern of development which could not be easily predicted nor managed. To date, this pattern of spatial development continues to structure the housing politics in low-income sections of the city and offer part explanation to why housing demolitions have become fully entrenched in post-independent urban development programmes. The paper makes significant contributions by clarifying the exact mechanism through which colonial planning decisions were inscribed on the emergent city and the ways in which the attendant socioeconomic and spatial transformation processes have served to exclude the poor from the city space.

中文翻译：

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从村庄群到城市：加纳塔马利的住房政治和空间规划的困境


本文利用二手数据和档案材料研究了加纳塔马利市的增长轨迹。它介绍了该城市的殖民规划经验以及规划实践如何影响扶贫住房部门的集体行动。分析显示，塔马利在 20 世纪初建立时，有相当大比例的土著人口，其住房做法超出了正式住房和规划法规的范围。因此，为了重建旧的土著住房群而迁移人口是该城市殖民城市规划实践的决定性特征。本文认为，殖民城市采用的碎片化规划策略造成了郊区的聚集，空间连通性较差，发展模式难以预测和管理。迄今为止，这种空间开发模式继续构建城市低收入地区的住房政治，并部分解释了为什么房屋拆除在独立后的城市发展计划中变得完全根深蒂固。本文做出了重大贡献，阐明了殖民规划决策被铭刻在新兴城市中的确切机制，以及随之而来的社会经济和空间转型过程将穷人排除在城市空间之外的方式。