GHANA’S URBAN PLANNING IS A GROWING NATIONAL CRISIS
In October 2018, the 6th West Africa Senior High School (WASS) student that year was struck by a vehicle and killed as she crossed the busy N4 highway on her way to WASS. You read that correctly, the SIXTH student from one school. Protests broke out near Adenta because locals blame the nearly 200 pedestrian fatalities on this road in 2018 on unfinished footbridges.
Our Principle Architect, Nii Ala Russell Adjei, is a WASS alumni so he was not only deeply saddened by these senseless tragedies, but he also knows this area of Accra well. For today’s post he asked us to do an analysis of this deadly highway and we discovered the reality is a problem much bigger than a contractor stopping construction due to a lack of funds. You may be wondering what this has to do with architecture. Give us a second, we promise we’ll get there.
POPULATION EXPLOSION AND NO VISIBLE PLAN FOR THE FUTURE
Over the last 3 decades Ghana’s population has more than tripled and as a country it is beginning to see some of the negative side effects of rapid urbanization without proper urban planning.
The N4 highway started off as a small two lane road without much traffic and people could easily walk across it almost anywhere and by design it was never meant to be a highway. Highways are expected to be high speed, high traffic roadways that connect two or more cities together. In most countries highways and pedestrians do not come in contact because residents don’t usually live directly next to highways and if they do, there are usually noise barriers or other fences constructed that clearly separate neighborhoods from the highway. Highways are usually constructed with a heavy emphasis on urban planning because they are intended to be used for decades into the future.
When the N4 was expanded in order to connect it to the N6, it became an alternate route from Accra to Kumasi that runs through the Greater Accra and Eastern regions of Ghana. It went from being a road designed to be used by the people to a road for cars and trucks. For those unfamiliar with the area, this meant almost over night the N4 went from being a small road to a busy, national transportation lifeline.
When it was decided that the N4 would be expanded they simply didn’t take into account the habits of local residents in the surrounding areas. Yes, some people were relocated to make way for the road, but the minimum number of people were relocated. In most places the residents of an area like Adenta would have been completely relocated to make way for the highway, but instead communities were divided and there is still a massive market in Medina that spills onto the N4.
Because most of the local residents were not relocated during the expansion, many children trying to go to school at WASS still need to cross the N4. With a high volume of cars and trucks that at times travel well over 100 km per hour, the speed is only part of the reason why there have been so many fatalities. The key issue is there are still approximately 200 roads that intersect the N4. 200 roads! Think about that number for a second.
So now you are probably thinking footbridges, proper crosswalks and working streetlights would be the answer. We disagree.
When we visited the area in February, we looked at the two footbridges that nearly half a year later are still under construction. They are both being built around their environment rather than being built to enhance usability. In other words, at least one of these footbridges looks like it could add over a hundred extra meters to the journey across the highway.
Let’s also think about this from the perspective of human nature. On a hot or rainy day in Accra, if you’re on one side of the N4 and you can see the place you want to go to on the opposite side of the highway, are you really going to want to add nearly 2 km to your journey so you can get across the highway on a footbridge or are you going to risk jaywayking and cut your journey down to 100 meters? We’re definitely not promoting jaywalking, but you can see from all the jaywalkers this is the reality.
Maybe we are being a little pessimistic, but we believe most people will be frustrated by the designs of the footbridges under construction as well as the added distances in order to get from point A to point B so jaywalking will continue and the problem isn’t going away any time soon.
Seriously, there is no way anyone in the right mind is going to construct 200 footbridges. This means people are still going to need to find a way to get across the highway and this means most are going to find the easiest, closest, fastest way.
At this point speeds could be reduced in certain areas, speed bumps could be put in place to see that they are followed, spiny plants and high fences could be installed to stop people from crossing or police could be stationed along the road to patrol jaywalking. However, those are all expensive options that don’t really get at the root of the problem.
Don’t get us wrong, we recognize the value of the N4. BUT…there is no reason why so many men, women and children should be dying on this road!
ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN PLANNING
This brings us to our passion, architecture. Although architects are traditionally thought of as designers of buildings, we bet you didn’t know we also spend a lot of time learning about urban planning.
The designs of cities like Chicago, San Francisco, Manila and Tehran were all heavily influenced by architects. Proper urban planning can reduce traffic congestion, more efficiently use resources, plan for future population trends and in the end save governments a lot of money.
Whether or not you’ve been to China, you’ve seen images on TV of what major cities like Beijing and Shanghai have become, but it required an enormous amount of planning and difficult choices.
As China braced itself for rapid economic development, it decided that in order for Shanghai to become an economic hub, the city essentially needed to be redesigned. The population needed to be spread out to improve their quality of life and new business centers needed to be created to further stimulate growth.
In 1991 the Shanghai Urban Planning Design Institute (SUPDI) began a full analysis of the Lujiazui area. We won’t go into all of the details regarding their analysis here, but let’s just say the findings resulted in a framework for future urban planning.
Urban planning isn’t just about being aware of what you should do, it’s also about having proper support. Knowing that the development of this area was going to be important, in 1992 Lujiazui was declared a “Special Investment Zone.” This basically did two things: 1. It attracted investment and development projects to the area. 2. It gave a green light for the majority of residents in the area to be relocated. Admittedly nearly all relocation projects are not without controversy, but if we are looking at this from an urban planning perspective, it is a necessary evil.
You can see from the design of modern day Lujiazui, the resulting urban plan completely controls how people can get from one place to another. Roads primarily flow around a central park and metro stations as well as bus stops are strategically placed throughout the area. People wanting to take a short cut can walk across the park, but they can also walk around it on readily accessible sidewalks. There is also a carefully crafted footbridge that forces pedestrians to use it because it is impossible to get across the road any other way.
Although Lujiazui isn’t a perfect example of urban planning and design, it is a great example of how successful urban planning can manage populations, effectively control both pedestrian as well as automotive traffic, and make an area ripe for investment.
With rapid development and population growth, Ghana is in a position where the sustainable future of its cities requires that the government put urban planning first. Before major infrastructure projects like roads are started, the government should involve engineers, designers and even professors from top universities in the process to ensure that urban planning is properly considered.
Urban planning is a subject we will always be deeply passionate about. We hope that by raising awareness regarding its importance and contributing where we can, ThirstyArchitects can help make the world a better place.
