FIVE

BUILDING HOMES IN THE “NEW ACCRA”

AT 7:23 P.M. ON JUNE 22, 1939, an earthquake struck Accra. As Assistant Colonial Secretary Harold Cooper recounted in the Times:

There was no warning of its approach and it started, not with the subdued rumble which increased in volume as the uneasy minute past, but with the sudden deafening clamor which pursued a monotonous and nerve wracking course until it ceased as abruptly as it had begun. The noise may most appropriately be compared (and this is an analogy which sprang instantly to the mind of almost every European in Accra) to that of a giant underground train plunging madly through a vast hollow station built only a few feet below the earth surface; And the monstrous clatter of the wheels of this imaginary vehicle was punctuated from time to time by solitary staccato explosions as if the rails upon which it traveled were splitting under the strain. The moment that all obscuring reverberation of the tremor had subsided it was succeeded by a shrill and eerie wail, now for the first time audible, from the African Township; But this in its turn sank quickly into a muffled chorus of dismay. Almost at the very start of the tremor the electricity supply failed in the ensuing darkness added to the general horror. Immediately after the shot could ceased police whistles began to blow in almost every part of the town and cars could be seen racing down from the residential area towards the crowded Jamestown and Asere quarters, which were expected to present a scene of appalling confusion. It is not unusual for natural upheavals of this magnitude to be followed, and aggravated, by rioting on the part of a frenzied, grief-stricken populace. In Accra, however, there was no such distressing aftermath, and the first government officials to reach the African Township found the streets choked with excited but orderly throngs, whose only desire seemed to be to unite in a mutual effort to alleviate the suffering which had so bafflingly descended upon them.¹

Twenty-two people died, more than one hundred were injured, and thousands more lost their homes. Government buildings were damaged, and road and water infrastructure required urgent repair. However, the biggest concern was with housing. In the aftermath of the earthquake, Governor Arnold Hodson quickly mobilized official engineers and volunteers to conduct a house-to-house inspection. More than 1,500 houses needed to be demolished and 600 more were uninhabitable. There were 15,500 people who needed rehousing. The governor immediately sent pleas for relief funds, both to the Colonial Office and to the British public, aided by notable political and commercial imperial leaders.² People in the town also responded quickly. Volunteers showed up to inspect houses, provide food, and distribute milk; African railway employees transformed carriages into temporary accommodations; African soldiers in the Gold Coast regiment quickly built “roundhouses” made from palm leaves in open spaces around the town.

Governor Hodson noted these extraordinary contributions in his dispatches to Malcolm MacDonald, the secretary of state for the colonies. Despite the significant losses, Hodson was optimistic about the future and felt that he “had the earthquake problem well in hand.” Much like the fires of 1894, the devastation of the earthquake also presented an opportunity. As Hodson noted, “In one way, in spite of all the suffering and loss, it is a good thing as we shall now have the opportunity of turning Accra into a town which everyone will be proud of.”³ Central to Hodson’s proposals for disaster recovery and relief was a massive new rehousing scheme that would mitigate some of the future risk of earthquake damage but also provide long-term interventions to change the shape of the town. Because the scale of the devastation left many Accra residents homeless and necessitated extensive demolitions, Hodson argued: “It is, of course, inconceivable the work of reelection and repair should be allowed to result in the resurrection of a town the disposition and conditions of which would be similar to those which obtained prior to the recent catastrophe. My policy is, therefore, directed towards securing at the same time not only the reparation of the earthquake damage and the rehousing involved their end but also the clearance and replanting of those congested areas which would have had to be dealt with by ‘slum clearance’ schemes in the near future.”⁴ Temporary measures in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake were just that—temporary. However, they would lay the groundwork for a more wholescale remaking of the city through rebuilding its residents’ housing.

This situation was simultaneously entirely novel and wholly predictable. The scale of the earthquake’s devastation was relatively exceptional—though not quite as severe as the damage from a quake in 1862 that destroyed much of the town. Hodson’s visions were also probably much grander and more fully realized than any previous attempts. But, in trying to leverage crisis or disaster to implement reforms in the built landscape of the city, Hodson also drew on a number of precedents that were connected to ongoing narratives about sanitation, public health, and urban governance. As Quayson argues, Hodson followed a long line of governors and other colonial leaders who sought to leverage disaster management protocols in order to effect major interventions in the built environment of the city.⁵ These moments of disaster at least temporarily transformed the spatial politics of the town and created opportunities to reshape the city by exploiting the vulnerability of Accra residents to control the process of rebuilding. However, these moments of emergency intervention and the expansion of spatial power were less typical and rarely as successful as colonial officials hoped. Rather, the day-to-day realities with which Accra residents grappled to secure and maintain housing and assert their rights to land in the city were more immediately and intimately connected to the regulations and rates that had, by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, become a central part of urban governance. The Town Council structure was deeply connected to the assessment and regulation of residential properties, both for the collection of revenue and the identification of eligible voters and office holders. The assessment of properties and the expansion of regulation and oversight in and around the home sought to reframe what it meant to live in the city.

This chapter explores the ways in which a wide range of government officials—from African representatives and colonial government leaders to nationalist politicians—sought to construct a “modern” city through the regulation of housing and its relationship to their vision of town planning. These spatial and social politics certainly reflected different—and changing—conceptions of land, and those politics in many ways intensified and transformed at independence. But regulation and planning also often produced the very problems that they purported to solve. The “slums” that Hodson was so invested in clearing by 1939, I argue, were often the product of both disinvestment and misguided interventions. If African town councillors pushed back on the enactment of these policies in the 1920s and 1930s, by the end of World War II, “town planning” policies had become deeply ingrained in the practice of colonial urban governance and visions for a postcolonial future, influenced by shifts in emerging transnational professional practice and discourses of development. However, the persistence of “slums” were not evidence of the perceived “disarray” of African residential patterns that colonial officials and technocratic experts assumed. Rather, in asserting their own visions for city life through the form and organization of housing, African residents advanced a different understanding of spatial politics that was often deeply rooted in Ga conceptions of land and community. As members of the Ga Shifimo Kpee nationalist party suggested in their shouts of “Ga land for Ga people!,” the “new Accra” envisioned in the plan for the town often ignored the values and visions of the people who represented its core. Instead, by the 1940s and 1950s, African and British leaders alike embraced the promise of modernist planning and architecture as the path toward a modern, prosperous future, which required all members of the community to embrace the notion of “self-help.” This democratic narrative of community participation echoed the embrace of “vernacular architecture” and construction methods by early town planning advisers like Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew. But for local residents, this rhetoric often rang hollow in light of persistent disinvestment and accelerating urbanization, which placed new pressures on the built environment and sociocultural landscape of the town and made it increasingly difficult to build homes in the town in both the physical and social sense.

LAND

The fees gathered through trade and transport constituted a large portion of the Town Council’s revenue by the 1930s, but this new form of urban governance was built on a new system of rates, or property taxes. The 1894 Town Councils Ordinance laid out a comprehensive plan for assessing the value of property in the town. As soon as the ordinance was extended to the town, the governor would appoint an assessor who would “ascertain and assess the annual value of the houses in such town, and take the names of the owners and occupiers of such houses.”⁶ The appraiser had the right, in the discharge of his duties, to enter any house between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. “on any lawful day” and require the owner or occupier to provide full name and address. The assessor would then deliver an alphabetical list of ratepayers to the district commissioner.

This assessment of the town’s houses connected new definitions of urban citizenship and new understandings of property ownership. The list of ratepayers was both a financial and a political instrument. The list was used by Town Council officials to track the payment of rates. But ratepayers were also eligible voters under the ordinance, and only those who were up-to-date on their rates were eligible to run for one of the elected positions on the Council. After an initial period of public viewing, individuals who wished to contest the list had to pay a shilling to inspect it, file a formal written notice with the district commissioner, and attend a public meeting to plead their case. Or if they still did not feel that their case had been heard fairly, these people had to appeal to a divisional court judge as a final authority. This bureaucratic approach to governance leveraged the growing power of the state—notably the courts—to reinforce compliance with the new system. Those who did not cooperate with (or who actively obstructed) the assessor’s work could be fined twenty shillings. Those who refused to pay could have their house seized and sold.⁷

While colonial officials frequently pointed to the democratic nature of the Town Council as an example of progressive leadership in the Gold Coast, African residents of Accra immediately resisted the rates. Far from being a democratic process, the rates were instituted “for the purpose of raising the means of carrying out the provisions of this ordinance”—an ordinance that, in various forms, diverse Accra residents had contested fiercely for decades. The 1894 Bill was, Sarah Balakrishnan argues, interpreted in light of the Public Lands Bill, which a wide range of townspeople had protested as an attempt to seize land for the colonial state.⁸ A group of local leaders wrote directly to Queen Victoria protesting the new Town Councils Ordinance, arguing that the tax (2.5 percent of rentable value) would place an unfair burden on a population that was already struggling from political and economic changes that undercut the wealth of African leaders, and elected members of the Town Council would be in the minority. As elite members of the community complained, people were being taxed without proper representation. But even more urgently for the vast majority of Accra residents, new taxes endangered various forms of social, cultural, and economic value invested in property. Due to the unpopularity of the new ordinance, the governor struggled to find individuals who were willing to stand for election out of the town’s 225 ratepayers. Taki Tawia rallied the town to resist, but when the colonial state deployed Hausa soldiers to disperse meetings and put down rebellions—and other members of the Muslim community joined in support—Accra’s elite residents worried about the threat of mob violence and attempted to diffuse the conflict. As the town scrambled to respond to the new rates, and the state refused to back down, these same elite residents stepped in at the last minute to pay the rates of Ga Mantse Taki Tawia, Osu Mantse Noi Ababio, and other Ga leaders so their houses would not be seized. Worried about arrest, other residents soon followed.⁹

The system of rates—and the debates about housing regulation, development, and planning—that emerged in the aftermath of the Town Councils Ordinance was part of a broader attempt by the British colonial state to grapple with the persistent problem of land in the Gold Coast. Unlike other colonies where the British seized, conquered, or purchased land on which capitals were built, Ga residents and their chiefs continued to control the vast majority of the land in the Gold Coast. Policies like the Public Lands Ordinance and the Town Councils Ordinance effectively commodified land, attaching value and creating new processes for asserting and contesting the ownership of land. But British land administration models were ill-equipped to deal with the highly complex politics of land ownership in Accra. As the British established their new position in Accra in the 1870s and 1880s, they encountered large numbers of private landowners—a marked difference from other territories.¹⁰ Ownership of land as a sign of wealth, rather than status through “ownership in people,” became increasingly important as the practice of slavery declined at the end of the nineteenth century—a period that coincided with the selection of Accra as the colonial capital.¹¹ Former slave trading elites sought to capitalize on the new “legitimate trade,” purchasing or otherwise securing land for commercial agriculture.¹² Families also made new kinds of investments in private or family houses, increasingly grand and built of stone. This commodification of land in Accra complicated long-standing Ga understandings of land tenure, in which land was held by a “chief” (or elected family head) on behalf of the lineage/family (we). All family members had the ability to make claims on family or stool land for use, and the chief (in consultation with the elders) would often reallocate land upon the death of a family member.¹³ By the late nineteenth century, however, individuals increasingly asserted more permanent control over their land in the town, building more permanent homes and burying family members within the walls of the family compound: this rendered the site both economically, socially, and spiritually sacred.¹⁴

The growing presence of the colonial state in Accra certainly influenced changing notions of land tenure in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Public Lands Ordinance allowed the state to claim land (and compensate owners) for public use—a right that was increasingly exercised as British officials sought to expand infrastructure, construct new neighborhoods like Victoriaborg, and implement new town plans.¹⁵ However, as Sarah Balakrishnan argues, Ga leaders and city residents also embraced new understandings of land tenure in order to secure opportunity for themselves.¹⁶ Chiefs like Taki Tawia began to cede large tracts of land to the colonial state, commercial firms, or other influential allies, often in exchange for payment, in order to consolidate his own authority and power in the city.¹⁷ Increasing urbanization also placed new pressures on land in the town. Having no connection to family lineages and thus no inherent right to family or stool lands, early settlers like the Tabon negotiated with Ga leaders to secure usufruct rights for their communities and were thus integrated into existing Ga systems.¹⁸ But new migrants in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries often arrived as individuals seeking economic opportunity on the coast and had less favorably positioned to negotiate with the powerful stools or lineage heads. Instead, they sought to buy or rent land. Ga townspeople in the late nineteenth century began to use the colonial court system to assert ownership of land, which they could then sell.¹⁹ Ga entrepreneurs could also mortgage property to secure advances from trading companies and mercantile firms—money which, Sackeyfio-Lenoch argues, they later reinvested in more urban real estate.²⁰ The rapid pace of “land alienation” in Accra significantly reshaped the urban landscape in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.²¹ The commodification of land certainly enabled the colonial state to purchase land to expand the boundaries of the city and develop new public works facilities and infrastructure; however, this was far from straightforward. Ga residents and other urban migrants also asserted their rights to the town in ways that heavily constricted British officials’ ability to control city space. In building outside of the city, British officials tacitly acknowledged that they were unable to control the city center because, as numerous observers marveled, the entire town was owned by Africans.²²

REGULATION

Possessing little direct control over the city and its residents, British officials and town councillors often focused on the creation of rules and categories that could provide the foundation for (at least the illusion of) “bureaucratic efficacy and order.” The Town Council’s Ordinance provided some foundational structures and responsibilities for both the governing class and the governed; however, as Bissell notes, “Developing an integrated and comprehensive legal framework was well beyond the means of local officials” and colonial regulations were often extended in a “patchwork fashion” in response to specific emergencies rather than part of any forward-thinking plan.²³ African residents in colonial towns often saw regulations as money grabs that extracted additional wealth from Africans through taxes, fees, and fines, rather than a means for protecting the welfare of the general public or advancing collective interests. But that did not mean that regulation was inconsequential. Much like the mosquito inspections that brought Accra residents face-to-face (often, quite literally) with British colonial power and created unprecedented new forms of oversight and regulation over the intimate spaces and daily lives of individuals and families, regulations regarding the assessment, construction, and maintenance of buildings and their immediate surroundings represented a direct assault on the autonomy of the city and its residents.

Given the long history of British fears of poor health and sanitation and their association with the congestion of the old town core, it is unsurprising that most of these regulations focused on African housing. Houses were assessed based on size and the perceived value of the property, rather than the income of the resident. Many “family houses” had been inherited from wealthier family members or, particularly in light of the changing economic fortunes of many merchants and political leaders in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Accra, had been built when the owner himself had been much wealthier. Chiefs and lineage heads were obligated to keep large houses for political reasons, but dwindling income had made maintenance difficult.²⁴ Homeowners who did not or could not pay their taxes had their houses seized.²⁵ In 1930 alone, more than three decades after the imposition of rates, Joseph William Blankson, town clerk for Accra, appeared before the court. He reported that, having followed the process laid out in the Town Councils Ordinance for the assessing and levying of rates, he had “here on the 24 sheets of paper which I produced, all initialed by me, the names of ratepayers who have not paid their rates duly assessed upon them together with particulars of their house numbers and the amounts.” Noting that a notice had been placed on the houses for twenty-one days, he was in the court to “apply for an order for the sale of the houses and lands,” which the court duly granted “to defray the rates set out on the lists.”²⁶

Rates were undoubtedly important to the Town Council; they constituted at least a quarter of the Council’s total revenue by the late 1920s and 1930s,²⁷ and nearly 90 percent of those rates were assessed on nongovernment property.²⁸ Fines and the seizure of property provided an important “stick” with which the Council could reinforce the collection of this critical revenue and maintain their other expenditures. Ambiguously defined “nuisance” found in compounds could also lead to steep fines. If homeowners were unable to pay the fines, Town Council officials seized their homes for sale or demolition. The Council’s sanitary and public health responsibilities gave city officials broad authority over the prosecution of “insanitary” spaces, and officials often took advantage of the vague definitions of these categories to declare properties “insanitary.” Properties labeled as “wastelands” or “ruins” were often seized, demolished, and the property resold.²⁹ In other cases, inspectors seized and destroyed the contents of houses. Residents were rarely fully compensated for their dispossession, and numerous residents were left homeless.³⁰ African residents identified these practices as extensions of the broader land grab the British had been engaged in throughout the Gold Coast since at least the 1870s, and colonial officials readily admitted that the laws governing sanitation and public health were more expedient in clearing land than the Public Lands Ordinance.³¹

In 1933 the Accra Ratepayers Association appealed to members of the Town Council to address the rapid increase in demolition notices. As elected African town councillors attested, the global depression had wreaked havoc on the financial security of Accra residents. Demolitions were inconsiderate in light of ongoing hardship; building conditions reflected the impoverished state of many residents who simply did not have the resources to maintain their buildings. In other cases, they argued, demolition seemed like an overzealous execution of regulation by Council officials. Mr. Addy, for example, appealed to Councillor Dr. Reindorf when he was facing a demolition notice. He complained that he had been asked to demolish a portion of his building because he had not obtained a building permit before beginning construction. While technically the property was in contravention of the law, Dr. Reindorf went and inspected the veranda in question himself and found it to be sound. He and Addy asked whether the homeowner should have to demolish a perfectly sound structure merely because he had been late in obtaining a permit? Particularly in light of the depression, such financial waste seemed both cruel and unwise.³² Councillor Kitson Mills also appealed for mercy on behalf of those whose corrugated iron buildings were set for demolition. While Kitson Mills acknowledged that the health officers were well intentioned and technically accurate in executing their duties to protect the health of the town, the “ruthless demolition of these shanties were causing more harm than good. It would be far better for one to live in a shanty than to remain unprotected at the mercy of sun, wind, and rain.” When their structures were demolished, dispossessed persons, who were in these iron shacks because did not have enough resources to build a proper house in the first place, would be forced to find housing in the already congested areas of the towns, where there were simply not enough resources or rooms.³³

For many Accra residents, regulations that addressed housing felt like a particular threat. For the British, rules that governed construction methods and building safety were critical to ensuring the broader safety of the public. The municipal engineer, president of the Accra Town Council (ATC), medical officer, and other European officers often defended the actions of the Council and its representatives in demolishing houses that contravened regulations. In the ongoing debate about the fairness of demolition orders, the acting municipal officer for health pointed to a building that had recently been divided into multiple rooms that were smaller (by 4.5 inches) than the allowed size in the building regulations. “The owner of the property was warned when he commenced the alterations, but he disregarded the warning,” the municipal engineer complained when he was questioned about the citation.³⁴ For these “official” European officers, the cause of the hardship was often the actions of African residents themselves who failed to follow the rules. These regulations were a manifestation of the underlying British vision of colonial rule as a form of trusteeship—a vision that remained dominant through the first several decades of the twentieth century.³⁵ African councillors regularly appealed to the Council to not “adhere too strictly to the regulations, but to exercise reasonable discretion in the matter” given that money was scarce. As Kojo Thompson noted, “Masons generally make mistakes in laying the foundations of buildings, and it would be a hardship to ask the man to pull down the wall which must have been expensive to erect. In view of the hardness of the times and taking into consideration that the dimensions of the rooms were only 4.5 inches short of the requirements of the regulations, he asked that the owner of the building should not be penalized.”³⁶ Mr. Addy’s case was held for further investigation as Dr. Reindorf conferred with other officials to determine the safety of the structure. Others questioned the appropriateness of the process and urged the Town Council to consider individual cases more carefully rather than deferring to the municipal engineer or the medical officer.³⁷ However, in response to these kinds of appeals, the president of the ATC and other European officers more often pointed to the letter of the law and the processes laid out in the ordinance. People hid, the president argued, to avoid being served demolition notices, and they often ignored warnings when constructing sheds, rooms, verandas, and other ancillary structures that contravened the regulations.³⁸ “They had received verbal warnings from the Building Inspector which is more than need had been done for them, and shows that these cases are dealt with sympathetically,” he stated.³⁹ There was no need to change existing practices.

Particularly in light of the depression, “temporary structures” like corrugated iron shacks were often marked as “dangerous buildings” and slated for demolition, which compounded the hardship for the city’s most vulnerable residents. In the eyes of the medical officer of health, these structures were an immediate threat to public health and welfare, which necessitated more urgent action. When Kojo Thompson argued that “every consideration should be given to the people in these hard times, and not to follow the letter of the law in every instance,” the president of the ATC remarked that “the Building Regulations were made to be enforced. People could not be allowed to build before putting in Building Permits. The Regulations had to be enforced, and the Council had not the power to waive them.”⁴⁰ More detailed investigations and consideration “caused useless and valueless discussion and unnecessary work to the staff of the Council.”⁴¹ At the core of these debates, however, were fundamental misunderstandings about the significance of houses for Ga people. For many Accra residents building and housing regulations not only provided new kinds of intrusions into the built spaces of their households and family life, but these regulations also often had a profound impact on the spiritual and ritual world the family was a part of. As Balakrishnan notes, “The house was a space of safety for the ancestors, a site of guardianship and protection,” in contrast to the “public sphere” or the areas outside of the boundary of the town, which carried significant risk and were widely considered a “zone of danger.”⁴² Family members were buried in the house, chiefs held court in their houses, and many rituals were connected to the house.⁴³ In seizing property and seeking to reorder the social life of the household through its built space, then, colonial officials violated sacred boundaries and often polluted important ritual sites.

Colonial officers, town councillors, and other elites who envisioned a new “modern” future for Accra, then, faced a considerable challenge. Even with the support of the African members of the Town Council, colonial officers were still heavily reliant on the goodwill of Ga chiefs and other city residents in securing access to land by the 1930s and 1940s, and practices of “intramural burial” made residents reluctant to relocate or cede ground. The 1888 Cemetery Bill sought to shift burial practices to new public cemeteries and make land more “fungible”; however, these rules were incredibly difficult to enforce and required constant policing well into the 1940s.⁴⁴ Housing regulations, then, were a tool, backed by the authority of the Town Council and the power of the courts, which colonial officers used to justify increasing interventions in housing practice. In 1936 alone, demolition notices were signed for 389 properties in Accra for a variety of reasons, a dramatic escalation from the previous year. Whereas the Town Council had previously authorized demolition for a wide range of reasons, including “danger,” contravention of the regulations, and unauthorized structures, by 1936 demolitions were almost exclusively targeted at unauthorized structures. For town planners, building inspectors, municipal engineers, and public works officers, demolitions created an opportunity to address the organization of the compact old town core, which they often described as congested and unhealthy.⁴⁵ If individuals would not willingly relocate or sell their property, the Town Council found other means to create and control space through demolition, permitting, and the regulation and policing of private space.

SLUMS

In diagnosing persistent housing and building challenges in Accra, colonial technocrats and political figures—like those in many other African colonies—tended to blame what they considered to be inherent African sociocultural forces. As Bissell describes for Zanzibar, sanitary reformers and colonial planners worked from a set of assumptions that “naturalize[d] social conditions, treating particular historical configurations as if they were the result of essential or inherent forces.”⁴⁶ To some degree, this narrative of chaos, dysfunction, disorder, and danger was an urban manifestation of European observers and colonial officials’ widespread stereotypes and assumptions about Africans, which crystallized (and were increasingly racialized) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As we saw in debates over health and sanitation, which formed the foundation of new ideologies of colonial urban governance, British officials often used scientific advancements as cover for explicitly racist practices, pathologizing African bodies and sociocultural practices in order to reinforce notions of European cultural superiority and justify increasing levels of intervention in the daily lives of urban residents. British observers frequently noted the mud and thatch construction of “swish” houses, the mixed-use organization of the city, and the narrow footpaths between houses, all of which were seen as symbols of the fundamental differences at hand in these colonial encounters. However, colonial officials often interpreted these conditions through what Mayne describes as “the stereotypes of slumland difference and repulsion that were familiar to them in their homeland.”⁴⁷ In nineteenth century Britain, “slum” discourse highlighted the fundamental “inequalities and environmental degradations underpinning modern capitalist cities”; however, rather than addressing the root causes of inequality, politicians, philanthropists, and social activists often shifted blame instead to the urban poor who, they argued, could and should be reformed. Spatial reform would reinforce broader perceived needs for moral reform. By the late nineteenth century, so-called slum reformers had become increasingly confident in their ability to design a modern spatial order.⁴⁸ In colonial cities, these same policies—developed by newly professionalized technocratic fields like public health, social work, architecture, urban planning, engineering, and education—informed new approaches to urban governance that placed authority in technical experts to find solutions to perceived public “problems.”⁴⁹

Technocratic officials and other observers increasingly described Jamestown and Ussher Town as “unfit for human habitation” and requiring new forms of regulation to bring conditions in those communities up to “modern” standards.⁵⁰ Throughout the documents preserved in the colonial archive, officials utilized passive language to describe housing conditions in “slums.” Frustrated by their lack of direct control over land and their inability to fundamentally remake the city, British officials complained about the “congested areas” of town in justifying residential segregation on public health grounds in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, by the 1940s, technocratic advisers, town councillors, and British officers alike referred regularly to “slums.” Architect Maxwell Fry’s captured much of this attitude in writing to the resident minister for West Africa about his 1945 report on the proposed town planning scheme for the city:

Slums at their worst exist at Ussher Town, Jamestown and areas generally inhabited by the Hausa or Mohamedan communities, and bad housing with filthy lanes exist at Labadi. Conditions such as these may be accounted for by poverty and ignorance. Labor immigration has been greatly increased since the war mainly on account of military developments. This necessitated existing buildings in the neighborhood of such being overcrowded and spacing compounds being led to accommodate shacks of all kinds. This is specially noticeable in Riponsville (Korle Woo), Sabon Zongo where, according to the medical officer of health report for 1942, some 100 people were sleeping in the open and on verandahs.⁵¹

Maxwell’s report echoed the passive language found throughout the colonial archives—these conditions “existed” without a clear (or admitted) cause. Clearly the only solution, officials argued, was “slum clearance.”

In reality, the situation was much more complicated. Overcrowding was a symptom of rapid urbanization, benign neglect, and intentional disinvestment. Having been both unable and unwilling to invest in public infrastructure and services in preexisting Ga neighborhoods in the early years of colonial rule, British colonial and Accra municipal leaders directed the limited resources dedicated to urban development into the construction of European and elite African neighborhoods; however, these neighborhoods were inaccessible to the new migrants beginning to flood the city in the 1920s and 1930s. In search of cheap housing, migrants settled in Jamestown, Ussher Town, and to some degree, Osu, straining the capacity and infrastructure of the old neighborhoods and exacerbating sanitation and public health challenges. By the 1940s the population in neighborhoods like Sabon Zongo, Adabraka, Agbogbloshie, and Christiansborg had dramatically increased.⁵²

Even in the face of these persistent housing challenges, British officials were often uncompromising in their adherence to building regulations and planning logics. A number of economic disturbances—from the string of cocoa holdups between 1916 and 1937–38⁵³ to the global depression—further weakened an economy already struggling to adjust to changes wrought by the end of the slave trade and transformations in the operation of mercantile firms on the coast⁵⁴ in ways that dramatically impacted many Accra residents’ economic prosperity. At the same time, Accra continued to attract migrant laborers, both from the centuries-old community of circulating laborers who moved between trading ports and coastal cities, and among young men and women in rural areas looking to break from tradition and access wealth through opportunities and promises of city life.⁵⁵ Facing housing shortages and high prices, many residents erected corrugated iron structures as a form of temporary housing. These structures were frequent targets of building inspectors who sent warnings and approved notices for demolition because, within public health guidelines, these structures were a danger to the health of the community. “Swish” structures were also frequently targeted for citations, fines, and demolition. The housing shortages and congestion were exacerbated by ongoing property seizures and demolitions in which owners were rendered homeless when they were unable to pay taxes or violated building codes.

As African town councillors repeatedly pointed out, the need for these structures highlighted a fundamental contradiction between the ideal form enforced through regulation and the reality of resources on the ground. Many individuals were unable to afford to build the cement block houses called for in town building regulations—wages were too low, trade was too weak, and the cost of imported materials was too high. When Councillor Kitson Mills asked for the Town Council to suspend demolition of corrugated iron buildings “until the change for the better in present affairs and people could afford to put up substantial buildings,” he recognized the health concerns raised by inspectors but argued that “the ruthless demolition of these shanties was causing more harm than good.” He also asserted, “It would be far better for one to live in a shanty than to remain unprotected at the mercy of sun, wind and rain. There was another aspect to the situation the sanitary officers had lost sight of—congestion. All along, the authorities had been trying to avoid congestion, and it was an uncontested fact that when these shanties were demolished, the inmates were bound to seek shelter in the already congested areas.”⁵⁶ Kitson Mills made similar arguments about “swish” buildings, calling for an amendment to the building regulations to allow for the construction of these buildings in Sabon Zongo because “the people are not in a position to put up cement block buildings owing to the prevailing depression.”⁵⁷ Unlike the iron structures, there was considerable evidence to suggest that these mud and thatch structures could be healthy and climatically appropriate structures. As Kojo Thompson noted, experts at Achimota Training College had successfully completed an experiment with swish buildings.⁵⁸ The Basel Mission Church in Osu used swish buildings to house European staff with no ill health effects, and Ga people had lived to an old age in swish houses for centuries with no problems. Other African councillors echoed Kitson Mills’s appeals throughout the 1930s to no avail. The medical officer and other European councillors argued that migrants would not invest in properly built homes due to their temporary status. Furthermore, following Simpson’s recommendations from 1908, the medical officer argued that swish buildings “harboured rats, termites, and other pests, and that after these houses had been built, dangerous borrow pits were left.”⁵⁹ The state would continue to demolish temporary structures that contravened the building codes: making an exception at this point would be “a retrograde step in the development of the town.”⁶⁰ But importantly, while they were having ongoing discussions about a proposal for a “housing scheme,” the government had consistently been unable and unwilling to allocate funds to construct new houses or provide funds and support for dispossessed peoples. Faced with competing priorities, European town councillors, who were in the majority, and other British officials directed the limited available funds to developing European residential areas in the interests of health and safety; meanwhile, African neighborhoods continued to decay as a result of underinvestment and overuse. In strictly adhering to the building regulations, these officials effectively produced the very “slum” conditions they decried.

DISASTER MANAGEMENT AND SLUM CLEARANCE

In light of these persistent housing issues, disasters presented both challenges and opportunities for urban governance. Simpson’s public health guide provided a framework for disease-related interventions that served as a planning handbook for early colonial officers. Early colonial policies and investments focused on the development of segregated neighborhoods like Victoriaborg and Ridge, which grew quickly in the first few decades of the twentieth century with the construction of both government buildings and European bungalows. Older neighborhoods like Jamestown and Ussher Town remained relatively unchanged in terms of major infrastructure works or construction projects, even as the populations of those neighborhoods grew and spilled over into new developments like Sabon Zongo. The 1894 fire was an opportunity in the minds of colonial administrators who quickly drew up proposals to replan the cleared area with a widened street and a new layout of houses and other buildings. Disease epidemics in 1908, 1911, and 1918 also provided cover for more aggressive interventions, including the demolition of houses and the resettlement of certain populations.⁶¹ New neighborhoods emerged in the context of crisis—Korle Gono, most notably, in response to the plague.⁶² While the colonial government seemed to eagerly embrace Simpson’s advice and began a campaign of reconstruction around the harbor at Jamestown, the energy quickly waned as finances were redirected to more urgent projects, often dedicated to the improvement of European neighborhoods, government buildings, or trade infrastructure.

The earthquake that devastated Accra marked both a continuation and a radical departure from these earlier disasters. This was not, of course, the first time that an earthquake had devastated the city. The region had a history of well-documented earthquakes, including two particularly severe events in 1862 and 1906. The July 10, 1862 quake almost completely destroyed the city, as well as the areas around Weija due to unstable geological formations of sand and clay that were common in these areas. British officers writing from Accra in the aftermath of the earthquake noted that “there is not a whole stone house left, and our fine old castle is a wreck.” While swish houses largely survived, “every stone house there (of which there is a considerable number and some very fine ones) is without exception irretrievably injured and damaged. The walls of all of them are split and cracked from the foundation to the roof; the verandahs are separated from the main walls; the partitions . . . were thrown down, and in many the roofs have fallen completely in.”⁶³ One officer who had been stationed at the British garrison noted that the “whole of Accra”—including soldiers and officers—were “in tents or wood huts.” He went on to say, “You won’t find me living in a stone house on coast again for some time.”⁶⁴ The damage to such sturdy and “fine” stone structures shocked Europeans on the coast, including the destruction of Christiansborg Castle, which then lay abandoned for several decades. In the midst of all of the rubble, a mud hut with a thatched roof seemed preferable to a tent, shack, or shed made out of the ruins of stone buildings.

More than seventy years later, informed in part by Simpson’s vision of disease control and public health through planning as well as increasingly racialized notions of architecture and spatial development, colonial officials seemed to have forgotten the lessons of the last disaster. Building regulations that mandated the use of cement block in construction left little room for alternative materials or designs. When the earthquake struck Accra on the evening of June 22, 1939, an enormous section of the town was destroyed. Twenty-two people died, and another hundred or more sustained serious injuries. Government buildings and the city’s waterworks were damaged, but the most urgent issue was housing. Thousands of homes were destroyed and tens of thousands of residents were left homeless, sheltering first in temporary accommodations under tables, market sheds, and shacks constructed out of rubble. Soldiers built temporary grass huts and railway workers opened up goods carriages to house displaced residents. Tremors continued for several weeks, inhibiting repair work,⁶⁵ but the governor, Sir Arnold Hodson, quickly mobilized labor and addressed the more urgent challenges. Electricity and water were restored, and repairs on government buildings proceeded quickly, as did temporary housing for the dispossessed. As Assistant Colonial Secretary Harold Cooper wrote in the Times, “The immediate problem may now be regarded as solved. Temporary shelter has been found for all refugees. But there remains the vastly more difficult problem of the rebuilding of Accra. [Governor Hodson] was to provide new homes for these people, the majority of whom are too poor to build again on their own account?”⁶⁶

In writing to the Colonial Office in London, Hodson immediately and eagerly seized on the possibilities that the earthquake presented. Widespread destruction meant that the city’s residents needed government assistance. The scale of the damage meant that large sections of the city could be cleared and rebuilt along new lines. Geologists and seismologists suggested that the government might consider moving the capital some distance outside of Accra in order to minimize the chances of future damage from inevitable earthquakes.⁶⁷ But for Hodson, this catastrophe meant that the “slum clearance schemes” that had “long been on the mind of government” might actually be achievable. Plans that had been drawn up in preparation for this “slum clearance” in Accra years before were now abandoned—layouts for communities on the outskirts of town—West of Accra, adjoining Korle Bu and Korle Gono, at Kaneshie to the northwest, at Adabraka to the north, and to the north and east of Christiansborg. Hodson’s strategy sought to use earthquake relief as a sort of urban development Trojan horse. In reality, this project to transform Accra into a model city was actually made up of two plans: the first, for rehousing residents who were dispossessed by the earthquake, and the second, for other residents who lived in congested areas.⁶⁸ Hodson called for the construction of an initial set of temporary structures for immediate relief, which would later be demolished to make way for more permanent structures.

Hodson’s dreams of a new city were tempered by technocratic officers who urged the government to invest in practical construction in order to avoid waste and future loss. As Gold Coast seismologist N. R. Junner argued, “From a study of the damage done to buildings and other structures in and near Accra it is clear that the damage and concomitant loss of life and injury to persons would have been much less if the design and construction of buildings—small and large alike—had been simpler and better.” Ornamentation and decoration (ornamental facades, columns, parapets, balustrades, copings, towers, gables, etc.), often utilized in construction by owners to convey status, became dangerous in the earthquake, leading to injury and deaths among the population and damage to buildings. While these architectural features had figured prominently in European observations about the fine stone houses in the city, according to Junner, “Stricter control and supervision of the design and construction of all buildings other than single-storey, inferior-type buildings is advocated, and the following facts, based largely on the experience gained in regions subject to severe earthquakes, should be taken into account when permanent re-building of Accra is being considered”:

a)A building should be of simple design and ornamentation with all the parts well tied together, and should be so rigidly constructed that it will move as a whole in an earthquake.

b)Buildings should be as nearly square and as low as is conveniently possible. Square buildings are more suitable than long buildings because the direction of the earthquake waves cannot be predicted and because they afford the best opportunity for symmetrical bracing.

c)The foundations of substantial buildings resting on clay, silt, sand and soft earth should be particularly strong and rigid, as the amplitude of seismic vibrations in this type of ground may be large. Deep foundations are also preferable for large buildings as the movements caused by the earthquake are usually much greater at the surface than they are at a depth of 10–20 feet. Where the underlying material is sand, silt or mud the foundations of large buildings should be in the form of a strong concrete raft. Suyehiro has shown that in earthquakes in Tokyo the movement of a rigid building on a massive foundation block may be much smaller than the movements of the underlying sand, silt or mud.

d)All unnecessary ornamental work and additions to buildings should be avoided.

e)Walls should be light and strong. Arches, windows, and doors are sources of weakness in walls. The use of arches is not to be recommended and windows should be as small and as few as conveniently possible.

f)Roofs should be light and rigid and should not be steeply inclined.

g)The piers of buildings and bridges may be a great source of weakness unless they are soundly constructed. In seismic areas arched piers should not be used and all piers of important structures should be constructed to withstand an acceleration of at least three feet per second from any direction; in other words the width at the base of the pier should be at least one-tenth of the height of the pier. Tapered piers are advisable in seismic areas and stronger cement may be used near the base of a pier.

h)Well constructed wooden buildings will oscillate greatly but will withstand anything but a very severe earthquake unless they are built on unconsolidated materials.

i)Good-quality building materials and workmanship are essential.

j)Inferior-quality buildings should not be of more than one storey.⁶⁹

Outside of the governor’s office, British officials expressed cynicism and skepticism about Hodson’s dreams of a “permanent scheme” for the “new Accra.” As one officer noted, “On the information given us it might be anything from the ‘really first class town’ of Sir Arnold Hodson’s dream to an eruption of bungalows not unlike the environs of the Slough Housing Estate.” Having seen these dreams wither before, more seasoned officers were hesitant to dive into a plan that would ultimately falter before the “permanent” vision was realized, leaving the town with a series of unsightly and poorly constructed “temporary” accommodations that would never be improved.⁷⁰ Others, like GLM Ransom, feared that “the earthquake has made it almost impossible for us to put the check on this wild governor than would otherwise have been desirable.” Even so, he noted, “We should do our best.”⁷¹

Coming late to the project, technical officers worked quickly to clarify the financial costs of the project and brought in Major Orde Browne, an ethnographer and linguist with expertise on labor conditions in East Africa, to consult on the project.⁷² The notion of temporary structures were immediately abandoned as a waste of money. Instead, engineers insisted, small houses could be built at equal cost and later expanded in response to owner demand. People displaced by the earthquake would be placed into these houses and allowed to live there for free for a defined period of time, after which they would be allowed to purchase their houses through a hire-purchase arrangement, paying back the government for the cost of construction plus interest. Other details, however, they believed, would be the source of conflict. In making plans, local officers turned not to community members or even Town Council representatives to assess needs and preferences. Instead, they pointed to other examples—from Port of Spain in Trinidad to Belize to Japan to the Slough Housing Estate in the UK—and called on government to bring in additional specialized technical advisers with experience in town planning but little to no direct experience in Accra. In considering the design and materials used for the houses, for example, Orde Browne noted:

Details of the houses are not available, but it is to be hoped that these will not be prejudice by too great attention to economy; For instance, a lining to the iron roofs, and some sort of composition, will make a great difference to the comfort of the occupants; instances have occurred in East Africa where laborers have refused to occupy houses with unlined iron roofs. Alternatively, there are various composition sheets which replace corrugated iron; they are rather more expensive, but last far better, particularly in a tropical sea climate, and they require no painting. The improvement in the temperature of the building which attends their use is, of course, immense.⁷³

Similar sorts of observations were made about communal kitchens, which had been unpopular in Gambia. In order to avoid “family quarrels” and support “the resultant contentment of the housewife,” government officials agreed to construct separate iron structures behind each building to serve as a kitchen. Communal bathrooms seemed to elicit no such concern, but officials did emphasize the importance of gardens and recreational areas, as well as markets and other public amenities. Planning the town was just as important as constructing the houses in order to advance new visions of ordered urban living and prevent the reemergence of “slums.”

If, in July 1939, Governor Hodson did not “envisage any difficulty in turning Accra into a really first class town,” the realities of what that plan would and could look like changed dramatically with the beginning of the Second World War. Hodson had promised that interest payments would be to the government’s advantage as part of the scheme; however, the conflict placed a strain on both financial and material resources available for development projects. Government was responsible for the provision of roads, electricity, and water infrastructure, but those developments were delayed because materials and equipment could not be delivered. Once Italy entered the war, the Gold Coast could no longer work with Italian contractors to complete the project, and the limited remaining building materials and manpower was needed to build facilities for the military. As Hodson noted, “At the present time the demands of the Services must have priority over civil requirements. . . . Financially too, the present moment is inopportune for embarking upon further expenditure on buildings which are, strictly speaking, not essential for the welfare of the public.”⁷⁴ Instead, Hodson proposed to use the remaining funds to complete essential infrastructure projects and convert a small number of “temporary” structures into upgraded, permanent buildings in order to guarantee some income; he also needed to demonstrate that the government continued to embrace the possibilities and seriousness of the longer-term vision.⁷⁵ Secretary of State Malcolm Maxwell, however, construed the pause as another opportunity:

I know that before the war it was your desire to turn the disaster of the earthquake to good advantage by the rebuilding of the town in a manner worthy of the capital of one of the larger British colonies. The war may make any large scale building program impracticable for the present. At the same time, the very fact that rapid development is impracticable may make the present moment a particularly propitious one for working out an up-to-date town planning scheme, and for taking any legislative or administrative action that may be necessary for its eventual carrying out. I shall be happy to be of any assistance I can to you in this matter which, as I am sure you will agree, is one of considerable importance.⁷⁶

Waiting, in other words, allowed government to design a truly comprehensive plan that was backed by state power.

HOUSING DEVELOPMENT

Hodson admitted that, in the aftermath of the earthquake, plans were prepared quickly and were not always as meticulous as they could have been, resulting in endless revisions and modifications. Yet Hodson remained noticeably disappointed in admitting that the plan needed to be drawn back considerably. African communities were also disappointed in the end result. As Hodson himself noted, further surveys of damage in the town showed that more higher-end housing was necessary than officials originally anticipated. Africans who had invested in the building standards prescribed in British regulations found themselves relegated to substandard housing stock, left to fend for themselves in restoring their former houses.⁷⁷ And yet, even if this vision of a new town was, once again, unrealized, 1939 marked a major turning point in the colonial state’s approach to urban development; it was part of a broader shift in British imperial policy from “trusteeship” to “development.”⁷⁸ In the Gold Coast this work was prefigured by the interventions of Governor Gordon Guggisberg, who invested heavily in infrastructure and social services throughout the colony. However, many of Guggisberg’s investments were targeted at rural development—strategic investments in education and infrastructure that he believed would encourage widespread development, decelerate urbanization, and improve self-sufficiency in the colony. As sites of danger and bad influence, cities—and the accelerating rate of urbanization—were considered more of a challenge than an opportunity before the war. The earthquake, however, shaped a new kind of language around urban development. Colonial officers acknowledged the challenge ahead. In discussions about the earthquake rehousing, Eastwood noted that:

I do not want to cavil at a scheme which, as far as a layman can judge, looks broadly alright, but I must confess that I’m a bit appalled by our helplessness in dealing with schemes of this kind. Here are proposals for the expenditure of large sums of money which will permanently affect the amenities and conditions of life in one of our major colonies and we have no expert knowledge on which to draw for advice whether the proposals are soundly conceived. If it were a question of engineering we should go to the ground agents; if it were one of health or labor we have advisors on those subjects. But the present question covers a wider field than any of those subjects, though they all of them enter into it, and we have no one who is a real expert on it to whom we can turn for advice. This question of housing in the layout of towns is one which is going to be of increasing importance.⁷⁹

Eastwood’s concerns, however, were soon addressed. While the war scuttled Hodson’s grand plans and hampered direct investment in the early 1940s, by the end of the war the Colonial Office was funneling unprecedented amounts of money and staff into new town planning initiatives in Accra and throughout the British Empire. The war further exacerbated urbanization, placing extraordinary strain on cities like Accra and creating a new urgency around urban housing development in the colonies.

Governor Alan Burns wrote to the Colonial Office in 1944 requesting £800,000, spread over four years, for a new rehousing and slum clearance scheme in various Gold Coast towns. The war, once again, prevented progress on the project; however, Burns wrote in January 1944, “I propose to push on with the work as soon as circumstances permit.” The plan involved the design, building, management, and administration of government housing estates—the latter, the governor noted, to ensure that standards for government housing were maintained and rents were collected in a timely fashion. In order to realize these plans, however, changes would have to be made, Burns argued. Local government was not currently equipped to plan and manage housing estates. The governor created a new housing department with its own director and called for the establishment of new local housing authorities, which would work with the community and the local government to advise management. This new centralized approach—a clear department from previous practices that involved a wide range of offices including the Labor Department, Public Works, Lands and Medical Departments, the Town and Country Planning Board, local political administration and the Town Council—would allow for better control of the process and encourage research and experiments in construction. As Burns noted: “I feel that on general social grounds, apart from particular causes such as the spread of tuberculosis, the provision of improved housing for the people, by methods that will both ensure and demonstrate the permanent value of the work, as if such importance that it cannot be left to the present uncoordinated machinery and that it requires a special department to deal with it.”⁸⁰ Burns’s plans coincided with the appointment of Maxwell Fry, a well-regarded British modernist architect, as town planning adviser for British West Africa in 1944 who, with his wife Jane Drew, quickly began to assess the form and function of the towns of the colony, including Accra.

This was not the first time that housing development and town planning had been considered in Accra. In addition to the large-scale rehousing and urban reform proposals that emerged in the wake of disease and natural disaster (the earthquake, for example), the government had invested in housing developments in European residential areas like Victoriaborg, Christiansborg, Ridge, Cantonments, and Ringway Estates in the 1910s and 1920s as well as newer African neighborhoods like Adabraka. The Public Works Department had established plans and construction practices for various classes of bungalow, as well as barracks and other communal housing for lower-level state employees. However, the government lacked significant experience or adequate standards for constructing African housing.⁸¹ As Fry noted in his survey of existing housing: “Government housing in West Africa for Africans, with the notable exception as parts of the Accra rehousing schemes for which the emergency they were intended to meet is a justification, is of low standard but relatively high cost, being built in permanent materials. The problem of raising the standard of accommodation while keeping within an economic rent is one that must be approached from various angles and will be solved by the efforts of many people working over a series of years.”⁸² New standards for African housing, he argued, were needed, including adequate living and sleeping space, kitchens in or near the house, private latrines and washing facilities, verandas, security, lockable storage of various types, and space for a garden and an area for children to play. Even as Fry advocated for higher standards, he acknowledged that single-room dwellings with shared kitchens and latrines would still be necessary for lower-waged workers. The gap between the cost of housing development and the reality of low African wages meant that government could not provide the high-quality housing that Fry recommended without a significant subsidy—one that they were not prepared to provide.

Fry was fairly ruthless in his assessment of existing colonial housing stock. In African communities, housing development had largely been “reactive” in its response to disaster and disease and stood in sharp contrast to the more intentionally planned and provisioned European neighborhoods.⁸³ In the Gold Coast he felt that money had been wasted on unnecessarily long access roads, an excessive focus on larger houses, and a disregard for the terrain. Echoing criticisms by African town councillors a decade before, he also argued that the high building standards set for the center of town made it impossible for African property owners to maintain their buildings and that standards should be relaxed in order to maintain the town’s appearance.⁸⁴ Instead of trying to force everyone to meet the same high standards set out in regulation, available housing should reflect the range of income levels of the individuals living in the town, and the integration of these different housing types would avoid the development of “low-class” neighborhoods or slums in segregated areas of the town. Community buildings and other essential social infrastructure like schools and churches would allow the city’s diverse population to interact, facilitating social cohesion.⁸⁵ In looking around, however, Fry was also uninspired by African building methods. He claimed that there was not “any architecture worthy of the name, nor any background of architecture.”⁸⁶ Traditional African architecture resembled “that of architecture in the dark ages in Europe”⁸⁷ and was “unsuitable for the development of a modern civilization.”⁸⁸ In response, Fry proposed a series of standard designs—a “typical labourers compound,” single-room houses, two- and three-room self-contained and terrace style houses, and mixed development housing estates—for Accra and other cities in Ghana.⁸⁹

Figure 5.1. Older housing stock in planned neighborhoods in Accra. Street Scenes, 1955. Source: Photographic Archive, Information Services Office, Ministry of Information, Accra R/2200/2.

Fry’s approach echoed new policy orientations in the Colonial Office. Building additional housing would help alleviate the pressures of rapid urbanization during the war, but construction could also serve as a form of economic development, introducing new kinds of industries and crafts into colonies: from the production of cement blocks to the provision of water and electricity. Despite Fry’s assessment that African construction materials were unsophisticated and unsuitable for modern living, the war made it difficult to transfer Colonial Development and Welfare Act funds from Britain and disrupted trade, necessitating the incorporation of local construction methods and expertise; factors like these forced architects to rethink some of Fry’s assumptions about design and construction.⁹⁰ These realities were further complicated by the low wages of many Africans. While Accra did have a larger number of wealthy and middle-class African residents (as compared with colonial cities of settler colonies in East and Southern Africa, for example) who were able to construct and maintain impressively elaborate houses, income inequalities were significant. Many workers in the city found themselves unable to afford even a single room, and the most vulnerable migrant workers often lived “in the streets,” sleeping in doorways, verandas, and market stalls at night.⁹¹ The value (and cost) of housing in segregated residential areas reflected these unequal opportunities. The description of housing that Acquah provided in Accra in the 1950s likely also applied to the range of housing options available in the 1940s:

At one extreme there is an imposing home of an African professional man, built on the pattern of an English country mansion having spacious and well-kept gardens and all the modern comforts and conveniences available. At the other extreme are metal sheeting or swish huts devoid of floor covering, many of which are in an advanced state of dilapidation. These lack amenities of light, water and sanitation. Between these two extremes is a variety of swish, wooden, concrete and brick buildings of varying size and quality. Rooms differ considerably in the space they provide and the circulation of air they allow. In Adabraka and other suburbs, windows are usually large and ceilings relatively high. In Ussher Town and in the other old parts of the municipality, windows are usually small and ceilings low. Consequently, households who occupy only one room in Adabraka or the other suburbs have a healthier environment than those occupying one room in Ussher Town irrespective of the floor space. Buildings in the old parts are packed close together. Except for the main highways, streets or lanes are narrow. There are no gardens. On housing estates and in the new suburban areas, houses stand in plots of land which allow for gardens, but the space is usually left as dry earth or concreted. It does, however, provide a place for children to play, whereas in the older parts they are usually obliged to play on the streets and near the gutters.⁹²

While government investment had been higher in many of these European areas, cost was often lower for European residents whose rents were heavily subsidized by the government. The value of land in planned neighborhoods was also significantly higher than in the old town quarters, further exacerbating income inequalities.⁹³

In order to implement Fry’s plans, the government passed a new Town and Country Planning Ordinance in 1945, which sought to clarify responsibility and authority for town planning. Based on examples from Trinidad, the new ordinance called for a Town and Country Planning Board, which was composed of “a president appointed by the governor, the heads of the medical, public works and lands departments or their representatives and not less than too nor more than four other members appointed by the Governor.”⁹⁴ The board was required to meet with the relevant town council and native authority before presenting any proposed schemes to the governor and Legislative Council. The board could also appoint a planning committee to prepare planning schemes and were empowered to survey land and execute schemes approved by the governor. Importantly, this new ordinance allowed the board to seize lands when the owners refused to purchase them and expanded rights to “betterment” from and compensation for the owners of properties whose property values were impacted as a result of planning and housing development.⁹⁵

MODERNISM AND TOWN PLANNING

In 1946, Fry described the state of Accra in the journal African Affairs:

There is a large old-established reservation and open space on one side of the town; on the other, the rapidly expanding residential area. As things are going at the moment, houses with jut along the entrance roads from Accra and elsewhere, in ribbon development, and the town will become most unbalanced with a large spread in one direction and a big gap in the other, so that public service of every kind have to be cut and run at a loss. . . . Accra is a town like Freetown. During the war, its water and electric services have had to do double work, and it has surprised me that they have managed to go on working at all. Town is developing rapidly and the need for housing is felt every where. Any knowledge of rents is never very accurate, and it is difficult to obtain information because the records are few, but we know that Africans are paying very large sums for terrible accommodation in Accra, for they cannot go too far outside to find new houses. So here the problem is very largely a housing—and we found certain things already prepared for us. The terrain is a series of undulating hills, valleys and marches and watercourses, and these have been used to introduce a water system.⁹⁶

Figure 5.2. Modern terraced houses in Accra. Aerial Views of Accra, 1994. Photograph by Iddi Braimah. Source: Photographic Archive, Information Services Office, Ministry of Information, Accra PD/802/10.

These challenges prompted a new plan for the town, both in terms of its organization—a new ring road and new housing developments laid out around the European sections of town, widened roads, new parkways—and the construction of houses for its residents. Fry applauded the work of Mr. Alcock, the chief engineer in Kumasi, who had been carrying out a number of experiments on housing developments.⁹⁷

These new plans were part of the expanding influence of modernism on architecture and town planning in British colonies. Fry and Drew established themselves early as leaders in this emerging field through their work as Accra town planning advisers and architects in the Gold Coast. Committed to modernist principles that privileged “the integration of formal and functional requirements with environment so as to develop specific expression of purpose and structure mediated by an abstract aesthetic capable of multiple rather than singular . . . responses,”⁹⁸ they fully embraced the power of modernism to shape the future.⁹⁹ As a “major instrument of government,” town planning could help ensure a more equitable form of urban development and lay the foundation for future development toward independence.¹⁰⁰ Fry and Drew’s ideas—like those of other architects of the period—were both inherently imperial and wholly independent.¹⁰¹ Members of the Architectural Association (AA), located in central London, were at the forefront of the new “international” movement embodied in the Congress Internationale d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM). But they also had close working relationships with the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, as well as their own experiences working in the colonies. Fry himself had spent part of his national service in the Gold Coast before being hired as a town planning adviser.¹⁰²

Fry and Drew are often remembered today for their embrace of vernacular architectural styles and their insistence on adapting modernist principles to the conditions of the “tropics.” For the most part, this strategy reflected a keen interest in the relationship between climate, environment, and architecture. Their approach—later termed “tropical architecture”—sought to use design to address the comfort levels of those living in warm, humid climates. Passive cooling, ventilation, and air flow were all critical concerns for those working in “tropical architecture.” However, they were often equally noted for their consideration of sociocultural conditions—in both urban and rural areas—in shaping housing designs and town plans. Drew, in particular, was highly respected for her perceived rapport with local peoples. While they initially followed other colonial technocrats and municipal leaders in rejecting the compound house (or agbonaa) as an “unfathomable” way to organize living arrangements, Fry began to question that decision as early as 1947.¹⁰³ By the early 1950s, they had embraced an approach to design and planning that emphasized “first, people and their needs; second, climate and its attendant ills; and third, materials in the means of building.”¹⁰⁴ The compound, they argued, provided a local model of the modernist idea of the “free plan,” which was both socially and culturally relevant and, when constructed well, appropriate for the climate. Local workmen, they acknowledged, were exceptionally adaptable and skilled.¹⁰⁵

In villages they were even more straightforward in their embrace of local building practices. Echoing the ideas of a Mr. Frank Samuel, Fry criticized the high cost of building in cities and argued that “in the village, where there was space, [Africans] were allowed to pursue their own ideas; building almost entirely from the local materials available the villager was able to build himself a reasonably spacious house—it certainly required replacing fairly frequently, but he could do it by his own labor, helped by his family, at virtually no cost at all.”¹⁰⁶ In cities, Fry and Drew called for more affordable building materials and the relaxation of regulatory standards in order to improve affordability and increase class diversity in neighborhoods. And in their educational and commercial commissions, they sought to account for local conditions in ways that both ordered social and spatial relationships and allowed for flexibility and growth, testing some of the assumptions of modernism.¹⁰⁷

Figure 5.3. Model of Proposed Block of Flats for Fishermen, Usshertown, Accra, 1953. Source: Photographic Archive, Information Services Office, Ministry of Information, Accra G/307/1.

And yet, as Ola Uduku argues, Fry and Drew’s approach was shaped through an understanding of architecture through a “them” (those being built for) and “us” (those who were designing the buildings) frame.¹⁰⁸ Their work “presupposed a European-Western supremacy over local knowledge and local architectural tradition”¹⁰⁹ and called for the import of expertise, ideas, and forms to enhance local living.¹¹⁰ In Tropical Architecture they praised the role of architecture in bringing about “new community life based less on family and communal sanctions, since the new division of labor must be accepted as a necessary element of westernized production, by introducing new skills and crafts by means of which self-respect and personal dignity may be restored.”¹¹¹ “Once more mankind is on the move towards new objectives, and people who for centuries have lived under the shadow of one or another form of surveillance now undertake the management of their own destinies and shoulder the compelling responsibilities of government.”¹¹² Modernism provided a tool with which African communities could transition to political and cultural independence—neither “African” nor “colonial” but “modern.”¹¹³ Housing was central to this project. As Fry argued, “The needs of the family are expressed first in the dwelling itself and then as an extension from the dwelling in terms of paths and roads, markets, shops, recreation, etc.”¹¹⁴ “Ideal Home” exhibits communicated similar ideas in the domestic sphere. Modern technologies, modern methods, modern clothing, modern living was the future.¹¹⁵ Like other architects working during the period, Fry and Drew believed in the power of modernist architecture and planning to “rationalize the use of space and regulate social life,” and they eagerly put those principles to work in advancing late colonial development priorities to improve living standards, public welfare, and environmental protection.¹¹⁶ They were part of a transnational network of architects, planners, and technocrats, both through the CIAM and through the networks of empire. Information, data, people, and ideas flowed not only between Europe and the colonies but also between different colonies, through conferences and professional networks, Colonial Office postings, laws and directives, and the circulation of research through scholarly and colonial publications.¹¹⁷

In attempting to consider the local context, Drew argued that they sought “to design in a way which, without in any sense copying African detail, gives a response which is African.”¹¹⁸ This presumed neutrality or aculturality is a defining feature of plans themselves. As Bissell argues, “In their final incarnation, plans and maps take on a form of appearance that nowhere reflects their processes that brought them into being or their eventual impact on the city. In retrospect, they may seem nothing less than coherent and compelling—every bit the rationalizing and modernizing instruments of urban reform they claim to be.”¹¹⁹ Planning was ultimately driven by the tangible, physical, and material. Proper policies and procedures would provide the illusion of order and control; even as plans repeatedly failed, officials sought new and better regulations, organized in a “town plan” that would both ward against the “sickness that overtakes those who live in unbalanced urban conditions”¹²⁰ and provide an overarching view of and guidebook for the future. Like the colonial officials described by Bissell, Fry and Drew were unable to fully see the problems with the system in which they operated.¹²¹ Despite their efforts to create new institutions to train local architects in the Gold Coast/Ghana and elsewhere, “African architecture” included very few African voices or perspectives, and non-African “modernist” paradigms continued to be predominant in architectural and planning education in the Gold Coast and beyond.¹²² However, hesitation about the new plan was widespread. While Fry argued that “the exhibition of the Accra plan showed that there is plenty of goodwill among all classes of people,” it was clear that ongoing engagement was necessary and that property owners would need to be persuaded to follow the plan by rebuilding or setting back their property lines with little or no compensation beyond the benefits and long-term security that would accrue from being part of a “good plan.”¹²³ Africans quickly reframed many of the aesthetic features of the tropical architecture style. “Social life,” Margaret Peil noted several decades later, “is not centered on a set of rooms but on the space outside them.”¹²⁴ Balconies, hallways, and other “public” areas were frequently repurposed for other uses.¹²⁵ Residents in Sabon Zongo adapted the grid plan to better reflect the spatial and social requirements of their spiritual practice.¹²⁶ Families in Tema Manhean refused to relocate to new housing estates. Implementing the plan was clearly going to be a very different—and more contentious—process than the work of imagining it.

Fry and Drew’s plan for ordered growth in Accra, released in a 1945 report, centered on the construction of a ring of settlements radiating out from the city center, connected by a new ring road, as well as a new government center, which would be both a site of new monuments and a center of circulation for the increasingly traffic-congested city. This infrastructure planning would lay the groundwork for slum clearance and large-scale redevelopment to take place in Jamestown and Ussher Town. Open areas were to be preserved, and new neighborhoods were to be developed with their own local centers in mind, complete with community buildings, markets, clinics, recreation areas, and schools. The area covered would house a population of 250,000 with an average density of thirty-five persons per acre. Keeping the plan compact would make service provision more financially feasible for the Town Council.¹²⁷

These were, in many ways, issues that government could control. By contrast, Fry argued, “Control over the appearance of the center of the town is [a] problem not easy of solution.”¹²⁸ Convincing business owners of “the benefits of good architecture” was critical to enforcing some standards on the main streets of the town, but planning the entire town was impossible. Regulation and standardization, he argued, were the solution.¹²⁹ By investing in new town centers that could provide a model, the planners hoped to positively influence others to come in line. Within residential neighborhoods, Fry and Drew focused on community planning. The complicated web of activities in the town was directly related to the needs of the family, they argued. Slums and poverty were the result of the government’s failure to satisfy these needs or other forms of strain on the capacity of the family. Self-sufficiency required self-contained communities that could provide for families’ needs. If government wanted individuals and families to embrace new modern lifestyles and standards, they had to make those standards and resources attainable. Government had to simultaneously step back and take charge.¹³⁰ In order to make the most rapid impact on the lives of residents, Fry proposed a prioritized list:

1.Erection of new government and municipal offices

2.Improvement of existing and construction of proposed main thorough fares

3.Slum clearance and rehousing at Jamestown and Ussher Town

4.Extension of markets

5.Construction of marine drive and improvement of the foreshore

6.Construction of the sports stadium¹³¹

Implementing these proposals would require courage, but, as he argued, it also “depends in the last resort on the people’s will.” In light of limited resources, however, “haphazard development” was a luxury that the government simply could not afford.¹³²

NATIONALISM AND HOUSING

Government quickly went to work operationalizing the recommendations of his report. Fry requested that an ad hoc town planning committee be formed in 1944, which included members of the ATC (F.C. Lander, Richard Akwei, V.B. Annan, and K. Adumua-Bossman), the town engineer (A.T. Flutter), and the medical officer of health.¹³³ In 1945, the Legislative Council passed the new Town and Country Planning Ordinance, which was to take a “broader view of planning . . . orderly and progressive development of land, town and other areas, whether urban or rural to preserve and improve the amenities thereof and other matters connected therewith.”¹³⁴ Upon the passage of the ordinance, the governor ordered that planning areas be declared in Cape Coast and Accra.¹³⁵ In 1945 the Colonial Office approved a massive rehousing program for the Gold Coast, at the cost of £800,000, to create new government housing estates and establish a new housing department.¹³⁶ By 1946, the acting colonial secretary noted that the Accra Planning Committee was using Fry’s report to inform an intensive planning process.¹³⁷

After the war, however, residents grew increasingly frustrated by the obvious gaps between planning visions and realistic implementation. Residents who were paying rent on the “temporary buildings” that had been erected in new government housing estates after the 1939 earthquake began agitating for the realization of the “permanent” housing scheme they had been promised after the earthquake. In January 1948, in response to the government’s failure to act, residents began refusing to pay rent. Chiefs appealed to colonial officials to allow residents to purchase their properties, even in this “temporary” state, so that they could complete the improvements themselves. Government officials refused, however, arguing that the temporary structures needed better roofs that and private sale would almost certainly guarantee a return to “slum conditions,” even as they continued to refuse to invest in the permanent housing scheme.¹³⁸ Chiefs like Nii Ayikai II, the Akumajay Mantse, also called out government for not realizing promises made upon executing deeds for land. Ayikai sued the government to regain control of land that had been deeded for public use, arguing that government had failed to erect buildings on the property and thus violated the terms of the lease.¹³⁹ Ayikai’s case generated enormous attention in Accra and seemed to mobilize anticolonial resentment across social and economic categories. These kinds of complaints highlighted the persistence of land challenges and the inability or unwillingness of the state to make good on its promises of investment and “development.” As Enoch noted in the West African Monitor in the same year, “British government, therefore, have now voted large sums of money for colonial development. It is not a development in the interest of the natives. No. It is a vote for making the colonies congenial by whatever scientific means possible to afford a permanent home for the surplus British population now that India, Burma, and Ceylon have closed their gates.”¹⁴⁰ The unevenness of implementation and investment inspired significant and understandable cynicism among a wide swath of Accra’s population who grew increasingly frustrated by the lack of opportunity.

These frustrations were amplified in the context of rapid urbanization after the war. The housing estates built in the aftermath of the earthquake, and mobilized further through the war, resulted in a considerably expanded municipality. New housing estates at Korle Gonno, Christiansborg, South Labadi, Kaneshie, Sabon Zongo, and Abossey Okai were made available to African residents through hire-purchase or rentals. Labadi was incorporated into the municipality in 1943. The Airport Residential and Cantonments neighborhoods expanded considerably during and after the war, largely through the construction of government, quasigovernment, and commercial bungalows and flats. However, Ioné Acquah’s Accra Survey noted in the 1950s that “in spite of the houses built by Government, firms and private persons within the urban areas and beyond it, there is still an acute housing shortage with its attendant problems of high rentals and overcrowding.”¹⁴¹ Housing in the city was wide ranging in 1954—from imposing buildings in the style of an English country mansion to huts made out of metal sheeting or swish. Spatial arrangements, likewise, were widely diverse—from closely packed buildings in the old town quarters to the large plots of land on housing estates.¹⁴² In 1952, Acquah notes, the town planning department classified almost all of the houses in Ussher Town as “poor.”¹⁴³ This widespread spatial inequality—not to mention the economic concerns noted by the Coussey Commission—informed the discontent that spilled over into riots in 1948, and that discontent continued to simmer as new African leaders were elected in 1951. Like the technocrats before him, Kwame Nkrumah embraced some version of modernism as a tool for future development. Seeking to redress perceived gaps in colonial urban development and transform Accra into a modern capital city worthy of the “Black Star of Africa” that could be showcased on Independence Day, March 6, 1957, Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah commissioned a new plan for the town and assembled a team led by B. A. W. Trevallion and Alan G. Hood.

Accra: A Plan for the Town, published in 1958, articulated a nationalist vision for the city, both in the built environment and through the forms of urban culture and urban experience that this built environment would make possible, echoing the discourses of “tropical architecture” and colonial development that circulated in the late 1930s and 1940s. Nate Plageman argues that in the years that immediately preceded independence major newspapers like the Daily Graphic served as important sites where the new nation and its future were imagine and where newspaper staff shaped discourses about the political, social, cultural, and economic possibilities of the nation-to-be.¹⁴⁴ In the pages of the Graphic, newspaper staff detailed Accra’s “ever-changing face” through descriptions of infrastructural development, urban planning, and architectural design—descriptions that linked “Accra’s physical environment to the colony’s growing prospects of national independence.”¹⁴⁵ In the process, he argued, newspaper staff projected an image of an independent, urban modernism that ignored the realities of many Gold Coast residents—including many of those living in Accra. But for these writers, new buildings and infrastructural development were “markers of progress” and signs that Accra had “come of age” as a city in and of the world.¹⁴⁶

For some, built space and a well-planned town created modern citizens—an embrace of some of the core tenets of modernism. Graphic writers saw sanitation infrastructure as a means of creating a new citizenry that could bridge the dramatic inequalities characteristic of urban life through greater cleanliness.¹⁴⁷ Kwame Nkrumah, likewise, embraced this modernist rhetoric and encouraged the development of new structures and institutions that would convey a new vision of Ghana’s capital and its citizens. New department stores like Kingsway would create “modern consumers,” as Bianca Murillo argues, by placing the new Kingsway store in the middle of a major new thoroughfare (now known as Independence Avenue), Nkrumah sought to put “consumerism on display” in order to help “legitimize Ghana as a new nation and establish Accra as a desirable destination.”¹⁴⁸ A new airline, steamship, and other forms of transport infrastructure, as well as hydroelectric dams and industrial manufacturing plants, sought to project a vision of the nation both at home and abroad. But for others, modernism was an experience. Highlife music and dance, cinema and film, fashion, and other expressions of urban life created a vision of cosmopolitan nationalism, which drew on global trends to articulate the aspirations, ideals, and values of local audiences: it was a form of modernism simultaneously elitist and populist, institutional and experiential, creating and created.

The Trevallion-Hood plan, then, seemed to embody both colonial-era reform and postcolonial aspiration for the growing city. Minister of Housing Inkumsah encouraged Accra residents to remember “the moral as well as the physical importance of clean, well-designed and efficiently maintained towns, and to ask all our citizens to remember that our daily environment means a very great deal to us.” “In this age of material well-being, motor-cars and advertisements we are inclined to overlook spiritual and aesthetic factors and I ask every citizen of Ghana to consider the need for beauty in his town or village and to be insistent that everything in that town from the largest building to the smallest road sign or advertisement is designed in good taste in order that the result will be towns and villages worthy of our State and one of which posterity can be proud.”¹⁴⁹ In doing so, he articulated a vision of urban planning as both infra/structure and experience. In revising the 1944, the authors, likewise, sought to integrate “local knowledge acquired in the recording of day-to-day development over the last twelve years, the rise in the standard of living, the greater importance of the motor vehicle and up-to-date techniques of planning”—producing a plan that was, at least tacitly, both local and global.¹⁵⁰ And, as Town Planning Adviser W. H. Barrett noted in the preface, the plan represented an extension of existing town planning—“a modest design to improve present conditions and to give scope for future development to be carried out in a manner fitting to the dignity of a capital city which is also practical and economically feasible.”¹⁵¹ This plan was not, in other words, a completely new vision for the city but rather a continuation and improvement upon the old, simultaneously capitalizing on the “present political buoyancy and enthusiasm of the public” for urban development and modernization while tempering expectations of a brand new capital city that would saddle the country with unrealistic financial burdens.¹⁵²

The plan identified thirteen different categories of development (Communications, Open Space, Industry, Population and Housing, Commerce, Markets, Educational Facilities, Health Services, Cultural Requirements, Land Tenure and Compensation, Government Development, Services, Central Area Development), which would distinguish Accra as a “capital city” rather than an “industrial city”—a designation that the plan’s authors say would be better applied to neighboring Tema with its deepwater port.¹⁵³ Accra, in other words, should not be the site of large-scale economic activity but, rather, a genteel city that projected state power and cultural sophistication. Attention and development efforts centered on the Central Business District—the quarter of a square mile enclosed by High Street, Kwame Nkrumah Avenue, Rowe Road, and Boundary Road—where some 75 percent of road users traveled to Tudu Lorry Park, the General Post Office, Kwame Nkrumah Avenue (South), High Street, Selwyn Market, Pagan Road, and the Supreme Court.

The plan made predictable recommendations about transportation infrastructure, sanitation, and other public projects, while projecting a pattern of urban growth over the next several decades. But the real vision for the city was shaped by the proposed “open space system” and the redevelopment of government sites in the center of town. The long coastal strip, which extended the length of the city, as well as “green wedges” that separated residential areas and provided urban residents with spaces for recreation and relaxation, were the most important elements to be retained from the original 1944 planning strategy. Trevallion and Hood argued that these green spaces must be cultivated and maintained in order to preserve the aesthetic value of the city’s design, making Accra a more desirable place by creating “microclimates” of lower temperature within the city, providing recreation areas to serve the growing interest in sports among urban residents, ensuring the development of distinctive cultures within neighborhoods, and preventing the overdevelopment of residential areas (as exemplified by older neighborhoods like Jamestown and Ussher Town).¹⁵⁴ Particularly in the center of the city, open land was often sited on government property (ministerial properties, the Supreme Court). In some cases, this land was identified as shale, which was dangerous as a foundation for further building due to the risk of earthquakes. Protecting that property, however, also required careful cultivation and maintenance. Young men would not play football in a garden and traders would not hawk their wares on public lands if they were well-tended and if there were alternative accommodations provided, the authors argued.

If the “open space system” was a continuation and extension of colonial-era urban design and town planning, the redevelopment of the city center represented a more clearly delineated nationalist vision. In particular, the redevelopment of the central area would highlight the power and position of the newly independent government and mark Accra as an administrative, legislative, commercial, educational, and cultural center as well as a center of “communications” (both transport and information). The area would not change substantially—the city center already ordered activities into different zones or sectors. Rather, redevelopment would address what the plan’s authors identified as “major failings of the central area at present”: “the lack of imposing features in the form of civic squares and other open spaces in the commercial area, the low standard of design of the buildings, the presence of certain inappropriate uses of land and the inadequacy of the present road system and of facilities for car and lorry parking.”¹⁵⁵ The most imposing and impressive sites like the Supreme Court and its surrounding gardens would be preserved and extended so as to “dominate the area.” The new Aglionby Library, designed intentionally so as to not compete with the grandeur of the Supreme Court structure, would be joined by other major new sites of construction, including the Ghana Commercial Bank, the Law School and Law Library, a new Magistrates’ Court, and a proposed Ministry of Information site (which was not, ultimately, built here). The area would also serve as the site for a new parliament complex, an International Conference Center, and other ministerial buildings (also ultimately sited much farther to the north).

Figure 5.4. High Street Scenes. Views in Pictures, 1975. Photograph by V.S. Katapu. Source: Photographic Archive, Information Services Office, Ministry of Information, Accra PS/1913/17.

While impressive as a symbol of the newly independent government’s power, these plans for the modernization of Accra seemed to do little to address the real housing needs of its residents. In 1953 55 percent of households paid rent, and percentages were much higher in neighborhoods that were dominated by migrants. With the exception of Sabon Zongo, rent prices per room rose significantly as one moved from the old town center into new residential developments. In migrant neighborhoods like Sabon Zongo where many residents lived on meager wages, individuals rented dwellings that were “unauthorized structures of swish, metal sheeting and wood.”¹⁵⁶ While these individuals struggled in the face of high rents, army officers, European commercial employees, wealthy Syrian and Lebanese traders, and government workers often paid subsidized fees for rent and utilities.¹⁵⁷ These contradictions rankled in light of government rhetoric about “self-help.” While focused primarily on rural housing development, films like Mr. Mensah Builds a House (1955) produced by the Gold Coast Film Unit sought to instill a new ethic around housing construction in the country. Created on behalf of the Ministry of Housing, the Information Services Department used cinema vans to screen the film in communities around the country, complemented by practical demonstrations by government departments, as well as photographs, pictures, and booklets.¹⁵⁸ Educational films like Mr. Mensah and The Boy Kumasenu¹⁵⁹ warned of the dangers of the city, the risks of irresponsible use of money, and the dangers of trusting disreputable people. When Mr. Mensah’s irresponsible nephew wastes all of his money and materials by drinking, buying his girlfriend expensive gifts, and gambling at the track, Mensah faces a crisis. Having retired from his job as a shopkeeper, Mensah and his wife pack up their belongings and travel to their new rural home—only to find that the building is incomplete. However, an African government worker who happens to be on site provides Mensah with an opportunity—a new Department of Rural Housing will help him complete his house as long as he can secure the assistance of the community. Reluctant at first, having been burned numerous times by government promises, the elders of the community ultimately agree and Mensah’s house is complete. Community members also begin construction on other houses in the community. As the song that weaves throughout the film warns, “Build your house and build it quick and see you build it well. Own your home and love your wife, you get some happiness in your life.”¹⁶⁰

Meanwhile government workers prioritized the construction of new monuments and roads—prestige projects to be “tackled now” in preparation for the independence festivities, while others were reshelved as part of “a long term policy for development.”¹⁶¹ The £1 million budget for the reconstruction of Accra was cut to £600,000 in order to ensure that funds could be distributed to support development projects in other parts of the country.¹⁶² The government’s grandiose redevelopment plans were scaled back. These had included a new sewerage system, slum clearance, housing and infrastructural development, road construction, market construction, and the organization of planning in Nima and Lagos Town, which, officials recognized, would only product a “cleaner, tidier town, eventually provided with an impressive waterfront and up-to-date sanitation” but not a “first class modern city with wide streets, attractive squares and well laid out gardens and open spaces.”¹⁶³ In order to meet deadlines, officials chose to focus on the infrastructure for key sites like the new Accra Hotel, the development of marine drive, the construction of a new entertainment hall and the Accra Sports Stadium, renovation of Accra Airport terminal buildings, and a new Independence Memorial Hall built near the community center.¹⁶⁴

Figure 5.5. Accra Changing Skyline, 1973. Photograph by George A. Alhassan. Source: Photographic Archive, Information Services Office, Ministry of Information, Accra PS/1458/21.

While many eagerly embraced Nkrumah’s new vision for the future, Ga residents in Accra viewed the plan with more skepticism, rooted in a decades-long engagement with urban and spatial politics. Accra had changed considerably over the last seventy years. High rates of urbanization brought diverse new populations into the city. The population of the city roughly doubled between 1921 (38,049) and 1931 (61,558) and doubled again by 1948 (135,926).¹⁶⁵ Unlike older migrant communities in Accra, these new migrants were not incorporated into Ga social, cultural, and political structures. Rather, they found space for themselves within the emerging colonial economy. Acquah noted that Indigenous occupations like agriculture and fishing were not as important anymore, the obligations of kinship were weakened, and new social, political, cultural, and economic institutions had emerged that catered to this increasingly diverse population. Forty-eight percent of the population in 1948 were non-Gas, a cosmopolitan city with residents from across the colony and around the world.¹⁶⁶ This population growth, Acquah argued, was characterized by high rates of inequality in income and housing, homelessness, poverty, destitution, rent exploitation, and crime.¹⁶⁷ The pressure on land and housing was particularly acute for Ga peoples who often housed large extended families.¹⁶⁸

In the 1951 elections for the first national African-dominated parliament, Ga inhabitants of Accra voted for Kwame Nkrumah as their minister of parliament in the hope that Nkrumah’s subsequent appointment as prime minister and the triumph of his Convention People’s Party (CPP) would result in an improvement in conditions for Ga citizens in Accra. However, by 1957, when the former colony of the Gold Coast officially gained its independence from Great Britain, six years of Nkrumah-led CPP governance made it clear to Ga people that their interests were not being represented in government. A mere five months after independence (and only a few months before the release of this new plan for Accra), Ga people gathered in Bukom Square in Central Accra (Nkrumah’s own constituency) to elect leaders for a new political party—the Ga-Adangbe Shifimo Kpee—which sought to restore resources, respect, and opportunity to Ga people and to challenge the Akan ethnic dominance in national political and economic life. The slogans of this new political party—Ga shikpon gamei anoni (Ga land for the Gas) and Gboi mli gbweo (The strangers are crushing us)—highlight the centrality of land and spatial politics to broader political concerns among Accra residents. While the Shifimo Kpee described itself as a nonpolitical association, founding members like Attoh Quarshie argued that Nkrumah’s desire to establish Ghana as a unified, democratic nation-state actually served to marginalize Ga peoples and institute a system of corruption and nepotism.¹⁶⁹ Organizing themselves as an ethnic nationalist party, the Ga Shifimo Kpee sought to unite all Ga-Adangbe peoples and to guarantee the protection of their birthright (both in terms of land and access to resources and jobs). The fight over land and the right to the city continued well after the British left, articulated through the politics of regulation and the promises of modernist futures.

CONCLUSION

Trevallion and Hood noted that the structure of the town at the time of writing in the 1950s provided a good foundation or plan for continued growth. As a plan rooted in colonial models of spatial control, “Accra: A Plan for the Town” provided both a resource and a challenge for the leaders of the newly independent country. It was, on the one hand, a reflection of the persistent legacy of colonial spatial politics, which chafed against Nkrumah’s critiques of neocolonialism and calls for Africanization and development through “African personality” and “African socialism.” It also raised new kinds of concerns among Accra residents who struggled to assert their own visions for the city in the midst of nationalist reimaginings. While Nkrumah’s own town planning policy seemed to embrace many of the broader points of the plan—the importance of imposing civic structures and open squares, the development of distinct neighborhoods, the siting of industrial development in Tema rather than Accra—his government was unable to significantly redevelop what is often referred to as “Accra Central,” the old Ga quarters of town and the center of Ga political, social, economic, and cultural power. In 1960, government officials estimated that in Accra alone approximately three thousand unauthorized buildings were erected each year, as the expansion of the city outstripped the government’s ability to implement plans and provide proper drainage, roads, and other infrastructure/services.¹⁷⁰ The building regulations, the engineer-in-chief noted, “were made at a time when little, if any, modern construction other than simplest concrete block houses, warehouses, etc, were being built outside municipalities”; however, by 1960 that had clearly changed as he argued that “there is a vast amount of building taking place throughout the country in all districts and a great use is being made of concrete.”¹⁷¹ While the engineer-in-chief was arguing to extend building regulations to the entire country, he acknowledged that “whilst many building permits are issued and applied for, it is not correct to assume these regulations are being properly administered.”¹⁷²

To some degree, those failures were rooted in the same kind of government inefficiency and ineptitude that William Bissell describes as “chaos” in colonial Zanzibar.¹⁷³ As Quayson notes, the large financial cost of such redevelopment and the financial challenges faced by the newly independent government certainly inhibited their ability to fundamentally redevelop the city’s downtown core, echoing the financial struggles of the British government in the 1930s and 1940s. At the same time, however, the “modernist aesthetic vision” of the plan—its embrace of modernization in the form of infrastructural design, architectural style, and urban planning—reflected a broader attitude toward technology among postcolonial leaders, development experts, and urban planners. The plan’s authors argued that this plan was an important revision of previous plans because it took into account local experiences and practices, which had been collected and recorded in the decade since the original plan was drafted. In theory, this would mark a radical departure from colonial planning efforts. In reality, however, the recording of local experience seemed to mean collecting user data, which was used to justify the proposed plan. The authors failed to interrogate any of the fundamental assumptions, concepts, values, or categories that influenced their plan. As Quayson points out, this singular vision ignored the “multi-synchronicity” of urban development in Accra, which was shaped by the diverse town-planning policies of the early colonial period, as well as the “culturally saturated character” of the coastal area, which was imbued with “cultural signification” and ritualistic purpose.¹⁷⁴

Quayson argues that, through this oversight, Trevallion and Hood “sought to project the process of urban formation as the posterior effect of central planning, rather than the dialectical product of the messy mixings of planned and unplanned processes.”¹⁷⁵ However, the inconsistent implementation of the plan also reflected the ambiguities and contradictions of Nkrumahist development plans and the realities of postcolonial political visions. In viewing urban development as a dialectic between planned and unplanned, we continue to privilege the importance of Western discourses of “planning” while ignoring the importance and viability of systems and structures that developed out of the values and practices of African communities. As Parker and Sackeyfio-Lenoch note, these structures were essential in the formation of early colonial authority in Accra. But, in many cases, they also provided viable alternative models, which continue to chafe against persistent attempts to westernize urban spatial politics and practice in Accra—the trotro system and market trading being the most prominent. By embracing the logics of Western urban planning and “modernization” as universalizing technologies with inherent value and meaning, we cast these local examples of innovation and entrepreneurial creativity as part of the “informal economy” and obscure their value as examples of “anibue” or “eye-opening”: aspirational visions for the future, rooted in African logics.