Economic Incentives in Sub-Saharan African Urban Planning

A Ghanaian Case Study

Kwasi Gyau Baffour Awuah

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000373332
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

This book explores incentives capable of enhancing the effectiveness of urban planning systems in Sub-Saharan Africa using economic theory as a framework. It argues that urban planning is fundamental to the achievement of sustainable and resilient cities, but against the backdrop of rising levels of urbanisation and growth, poverty, informal development, and climate change, such systems are failing to be promoted and successfully maintained in the region.

Across ten chapters, it analyses the connection between urban planning and socio-economic development, indicators of effective urban planning systems, and the role and influence of incentives with real-world evidence. It develops quantitative models to estimate the costs and benefits of urban planning systems, focussing on the developing world where organised data is less accessible. Using Ghana as a case study, it demonstrates a step-by-step approach on how to implement the quantitative models discussed.

Economic Incentives in Sub-Saharan African Urban Planning will be useful reading for researchers, policy-makers, development agencies, and students in urban planning, sustainable development, and economics.

1 Sub-Saharan Africa urban centres and urban planning

1.1 Background

This book investigates compliance with urban planning and development regulations in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) using Austrian economics theory of human action (Chapter 5) as the main analytical lens to demonstrate how incentives can improve planning systems in the region and the determination of incentives. Current wisdom professes that headway for human development and socio-economic progress is predicated on the adoption of sustainability principles, particularly in relation to the three main sustainability pillars: environmental, economic, and social. This followed the sustainability revolution, which emerged about five decades ago. The revolution was a global action that challenged the then existing thinking relating to ‘progress’, ‘growth’, and ‘development’. Prior to that, there was a belief that development problems especially those of the developing world could be addressed through world-wide economic growth. However, that belief was later seen as unreliable (Du Pisani, 2006). Development and conservation were also misconstrued to be conflicting issues. This was because development was perceived as exploitation of natural resources whilst conservation was regarded as protection of natural resources, but both are now seen as interdependent issues. These imperatives, among other things, necessitated a paradigm shift to a new notion of development, which later emerged as sustainable development (Du Pisani, 2006). Sustainable development professes a compromise between development and conservation, and it is defined as:

....................... development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

(Brundtland Report, WCED, 1987, p. 43)

The sustainability revolution made a clarion call for the pursuit of sustainable development as a global goal. Accordingly, sustainability principles have since seen application in several disciplines and fields. These include commerce and business, education, agriculture, engineering to mention but a few. In the built environment, there are increasing calls for the implementation of sustainable urban development and management, especially in developing countries, such as those in SSA. Fundamental to these calls is the need for cities and urban centres to be sustainable. More recently, the United Nations (UN) reinforced the above call by launching the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, which were developed from the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development. Goal 11 of the SDGs subscribes to the promotion of safe, inclusive, resilient, productive, and liveable cities and human settlements. A New Urban Agenda (NUA) has since been also formulated and adopted. According to the UN (2017), the NUA, which was adopted at the UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) (global summit held every 20 years) in October 2016 in Quito, was produced from the effort of several stakeholders. These included member states of the UN, intergovernmental organisations; the UN-Habitat, over 40 UN agencies, funds, and programmes; 200 Policy Unit experts with 20 co-leading organisations; 16 partner constituent groups of the General Assembly of Partners; thousands of subnational and local governments and all major networks of local and regional governments coordinated by the Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments; 197 participating states; over 1,100 organisations; and over 58,000 networks.

The NUA is a framework for urban development and excepting the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including the SDGs, the framework takes on board several other existing initiatives such as the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development, the Paris Agreement adopted under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-20304, the Vienna Programme of Action for Landlocked Developing Countries for the Decade 2014-20245, the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) Accelerated Modalities of Action (SAMOA) Pathway, and the Istanbul Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries for the Decade 2011–2020 (UN, 2017). Essentially, the NUA is therefore a further confirmation of the global assurance towards the pursuit of sustainable urban development as a necessary action for the realisation of sustainable development in an integrated and coordinated way at the global, regional, national, subnational, and local levels, with the participation of all relevant actors ensuring the implementation and localisation of the above initiatives, particularly the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with the SDGs and its target of Goal 11. The UN (2017, pp. 5–7) notes that, through the NUA, eight distinct end states of cities and human settlements are envisaged as follows:

• Honour their social functions extending to the social and environmental functions of land to ensure adequate housing as a component of adequate standard of living, access to safe and affordable drinking water and sanitation, and equal access for all to public goods and quality services, among others;
• Ensure the meeting of needs of all inhabitants and recognise the particular needs of people in vulnerable situations through participatory administration and management, and the promotion of civic engagement to achieve we-feeling and belonging, among other things, as well as foster cohesion, inclusion, and safety in peaceful and pluralistic societies;
• Achieve gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls through complete and effective participation and equal rights in all fields and in leadership at all levels of decision-making;
• Ensure the meeting of challenges and opportunities of both the present and the future as well as sustain inclusive and sustainable economic growth and leverage urbanisation for structural transformation, high productivity, value-added activities and resource efficiency, and harnessing local economies among others;
• Promote integrated and sustainable urban and territorial development at all levels as well as ensure the fulfilment of territorial functions across administrative boundaries including serving as hubs and drivers for balanced, integrated, and sustainable urban and territorial development;
• Foster age- and gender-responsive planning and investment for sustainable, safe, accessible, and resource-efficient mobility systems for humans and goods and services;
• Undertake disaster risk reduction and management, reducing vulnerability, building resilience and responsiveness to natural and human-made hazards, and fostering mitigation of and adaptation to climate change; and
• Protect, conserve, restore, and promote cities and human settlements, ecosystems, water, natural habitats, and biodiversity, as well as minimise their environmental impact and change to sustainable consumption and production patterns.

The call for sustainable urban development and management in SSA and other developing regions stems partly from rapid urban growth and urbanisation, rising levels of urban informality, poverty, and social exclusion, among others. Despite European colonial authorities’ deliberate policy to hold down the populations of Africa’s urban centres through imposition of restrictions on migration of indigenous African population to towns prior to the 1960s (Satterthwaite, 1996; Njoh, 2009), urban growth in Africa accelerated in the 1950s (Rakodi, 1998). Rakodi (1998) reports that the African continent, except for South Africa, recorded urban growth of between 4% and 6% in the 1950s and accelerated after 1960s when most African states attained independence. According to a 1998 UN report, Africa’s urban population grew from 14.6% in 1950 to 20.7% in 1965 and then to 27.3% and 34.9% by 1980 and 1995, respectively, compared with the Asian urban population, which stood at 17.4%, 22.4%, 26.7%, and 34.7% in the same years. Presently, more than 50% of the world’s population lives in urban areas and this is expected to increase to 75% by 2050, at a growth rate of 65 million urban dwellers per annum (UN, 2017). However, SSA with a current estimated urban population of 472 million people is considered the fastest urbanising region in the world and its urban population is expected to double over the next 25 years (CSIS, 2018). In fact, the urban population of the continent of Africa is projected to increase from 11.3% in 2010 to 20.20% by 2050 (UN, 2017).

Cities and urban areas in Africa, like their counterparts across the globe, play a vital role in socio-economic development. Cities in Africa account for 80% of the continent’s gross domestic product (GDP) (African Development Bank (AfDB), 2013). Earlier, the World Bank (2009, p. 48) noted that no country in the world has developed without growth of its cities. The Bank (p. 57) buttressed this observation with evidence that the top 30 cities in the world ranked by GDP in 2005 accounted for 16% of the world’s output, whilst the top 100 cities generated almost 25% of the global output. The Bank pointed out that cities in SSA, such as Luanda, Nairobi, and Lagos in 2005, contributed around 20% of each of their countries’ (Angola, Kenya, and Nigeria, respectively) GDP, whilst Mexico City, another city in a developing region, generated 30% of Mexico’s GDP.

Experts opine that the current spate of urbanisation and urban growth taking place in Africa, if properly managed and harnessed, could significantly strengthen the role of cities and urban areas on the continent as engines of sustainable economic growth and development. For example, the scenario-based approach, one of the popular policy prescriptions for Africa’s sustainable development, which is based on the global economy and methodology model, acknowledges the significant influence of urbanisation in Africa’s development discourse. The approach uses three scenarios, namely, convergence, business-as-usual, and downside. Based on long-term projection of the evolution of 186 countries as a function of labour force, capital stock and total factor productivity, it recommended the convergence scenario (JICA, 2013). According to the convergence scenario, Africa’s per capita income is expected to grow by around 4.6% per annum over the next 40 years, converging with those of the world moving from 27% of the world’s average in recent times to 52%. The per capita growth will also introduce several changes and transform the lives of people on the continent and its role in the world. The size of the middle class will grow more than tenfold, an increase from 12% to 68%, whilst poverty levels are projected to decline from 380 million to 53 million (37% to under 3%). Further, Africa’s contribution of under 3% to global GDP will increase to 9%. However, these expected development outcomes are dependent on factors, such as macroeconomic performance, poverty and inequality demography, urbanisation, and access to natural resources (JICA, 2013).

Apart from the above conditions, it is argued that cities’ and urban areas’ continuous performance as an engine of sustainable growth and development depends on the institution of appropriate regulations for their configuration and intervention, to ensure efficient land use and management of diseconomies of agglomeration. This implies that for SSA cities and urban areas to promote growth and development, there is a need for their effective and efficient management (UN-Habitat, 2008; World Bank, 2009). Thus, the idea of urbanisation being a tool to spur Africa’s economic growth and development fundamentally hinges on the multiplier agglomeration of people and economic activities and institution of regulation for configuration of urban areas, and efficient land use and management of diseconomies of agglomeration. Africa’s urbanisation is, however, occurring under weak and fragile economies, and has outrun the capacities of constituent states to provide developable land, affordable housing, and adequate infrastructure and services (Baffour Awuah, 2018). African cities and urban areas are characterised by several deformities. They are typically crowded especially within the central areas and offer poor housing conditions (UN-Habitat, 2014; Lall et al., 2017). Most of the urban population in Africa does not have access to formal housing. This population lives in informal settlements and slums, which are sometimes co-located with first-class settlements (Figures 1.1 and 1.2) with no or less adequate infrastructure and service provision. For instance, 60% out of the over 1 billion global urban slum dwellers live in SSA (Gilbert, 2014). Lall et al. (2017) note that 28% of urban residents in Dar es salaam, Tanzania, live at least three to a room and that percentage is higher (50%) in cities like Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire. Further, around 60% of the urban population in Africa lives in slums. This is far higher than the average (34%) for other developing regions of the world.

In addition to the above is the recent outbreak of the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19), which has already started posing several socio-economic and environmental impacts on urban environments in Africa and indeed the entire continent, threatening efforts towards sustainable development. COVID-19 originated from the Chinese city of Wuhan in the Hubei province in the latter part of 2019 and has since spread across the world (Huang et al., 2020; Zhu, et al., 2020), resulting in the World Health Organisation (WHO) declaring it a global health pandemic (WHO, 2020). Apart from the rapid spread of the disease and its associated deaths, particularly in Europe, the US, and Brazil, among others, it has generated and continues to generate several socio-economic and environmental impacts (see Chapter 3), predominantly through the several measures instituted to contain it, such as imposition of partial or total lockdowns, social distancing and stay-at-home policies, wearing of face masks, and the use of gloves and hand sanitisers. Environmentally, the outbreak of the disease has resulted in increase in domestic energy consumption and generation of waste pollution in the form of used ordinary and surgical face masks, plastic sanitiser bottles, solid tissue papers, and other clinical trash, which end up in the environment; cities, towns, communities, neighbourhoods, etc.; wate...