Balancing customary and statutory governance to sustain informality in Ghana's public spaces

Abstract

Informality, a significant component of African cities, is under siege as state and local governments, through public policies, attempt to evict, displace, and relocate informal workers from city centres with an urban redevelopment agenda. We explore the complexities of governing public space in Ghanaian cities to answer the question: How do existing statutory frameworks and customary practices combine to shape informal workers' access and use of public spaces in cities? Using qualitative methods, we conceptualise the public space as a shared resource. We explore through a New Institutional Political Ecology framework, how certain actors gain power and use institutions to control access and use of these spaces. Our finding is that public spaces are communal lands of local people but are regulated by statutory planning policies to cause conflicting institutional pluralism; there is persisting contestation and transformation of pre-colonial institutions in urban centres, and informality remains a necessary component in urban governance. We contribute to urban governance and informal urbanism literature by presenting an institutional and political analysis of the growth and persistence of informal work in sub-Saharan cities. We propose that for sustainable governance of public spaces used for informal work in sub-Saharan cities, planning policies must be based on a balance of the plural institutions from which informal workers make access claims.

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