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.