Building cities as if God is creating more land

A Budhist monk once said, “Young man buy land, for God is not creating more land”. This statement is a layman’s expression of economic theory relating to the limited nature of land as a natural resource and a factor of production and the need for us to be very careful in the use of land. One disturbing feature of the urban development system in Ghana is that our cities are developing as if the supply of land is unlimited. In fact, we are building towns and cities in Ghana as if God has assured us of unlimited supply of urban land. This phenomenon of rapid and uncontrolled spread of physical developments in the fringes of towns and cities is termed “Urban Sprawl” which is the subject of this article.

The Reality

Urban sprawl is a real national phenomenon in Ghana now. It is the obvious consequence of rapid urbanisation trends being experienced in the country. Available records indicate that the urban areas are growing at the rate of 4.24 per cent as of 2010 with 51 per cent of the population living in urban centres. As a result of the phenomenon, urban development density at the national level decreased by about 1.2 per cent per year between 2000 and 2010.

At the regional level, densities in built-up areas declined in six regions, namely Volta, Brong Ahafo, Ashanti, Upper West, Western and Greater Accra. For instance, a study of the Greater Kumasi Sub-Regional

Area (GKSRA) revealed that urban expansion increased over fourfold from 88 to 400 square kilometres between 1986 and 2014. It further indicates that much of the expansion occurred at the urban fringes than at the core of the urban areas within the past 13 years.

Causes

What are the causes of this disturbing phenomenon? Urban sprawl is a global concern because of its long-term effects on global warming. One particular study has documented 25 causes of urban sprawl. In Ghana specifically, rapid population growth in urban areas influenced largely by migration is the major cause. Between 1960 and 2010, urban population increased from 23 per cent to 51 per cent. With rapid population growth, demand for housing increases and many people begin to move to the urban fringes to acquire land for housing at relatively lower cost. The demand escalates so high that planning often lags behind as residential developments occur at the urban fringes in an unplanned manner and often at lower levels of densities with serious cost implications for the provision of infrastructure.

Another major cause is the lack of convergence between individual decision on residential choices and the dominant land ownership system. Individuals have the freedom to choose where to live, and the landowners (that is families and chiefs) also have the right to release land to developers at their own time and pace without recourse to the approved direction of growth of the city. This results in mismatches between land demand and supply which eventually creates uncontrolled urban growth. If there was some coordinated central control of the release of land, such sprawling could be minimised.

Besides these, the rate of sprawl happens faster such that the cities authorities, with inadequate capacity to monitor and control such developments, are overwhelmed. Lastly, in the situation of inadequate housing for the low income earners in inner-city areas, the new poor migrants are often compelled to build makeshift structures with low quality materials on cheap peri-urban lands. Such developments often become unauthorised/squatter settlements such as Fadama, parts of Madina and Kasoa in Accra and Anloga, parts of Kaase and Ayigya Zongo in Kumasi.

Effects

The negative effects of urban sprawl are mostly undesirable and come with huge cost to the city and its residents. As indicated earlier, the primary effect is reduction in densities which basically leads to under-utilisation of scarce urban land. As urban sprawl reduces residential densities, it costs more in providing infrastructure facilities such as electricity, water, sanitation and access roads to houses, especially at the urban fringes. This is simply so because with low residential and population densities, it obviously costs more per person or house to provide such areas with infrastructure services. Several studies have established that people living in sprawling areas generally lack access to such facilities because it is relatively more costly in providing such services as compared to the high density central and indigenous areas.

Other costs include time spent in commuting over long distances to the city centre, high transport fares and fuel costs, as well as environmental pollution through emission of carbon dioxide fumes with serious health consequences. In addition, urban sprawl results in loss of rich agricultural lands in the urban fringes and thereby creating vicious cycle of poverty for the farmers who hitherto depended on the land for livelihood. It has been estimated that about 80 per cent of urban expansion within the next 30 years will occur on crop lands and in forests with serious impacts on water bodies and wetlands. Such rapid crop land conversions also have obvious implications for food security and climate change consequences.

Remedies

To address this developmental challenge, a number of interventions are required. Key among these is to intensify planning and development control machinery in our cities and urban centres to ensure that physical planning and the provision of basic infrastructure go ahead of housing development.

This requires adequately resourcing the Town and Country Planning Departments (TCPD) and other development control authorities to enable them to prepare adequate planning schemes that will guide and direct housing development. In addition, this also means the city authorities should deploy advanced technology for planning and growth surveillance, especially Geographical Information Systems (GIS) which has the capacity of providing regular and accurate data on land use changes in a given area under surveillance.

There is also the need for continuous dialogue between planning authorities and landowners (especially the chiefs) to ensure coordinated release of land for housing development. The landlords must be assisted to set boundaries of areas beyond which they should not demarcate land for any physical development. The landowners would agree and enforce such boundaries when they understand that their land values would appreciate when planning schemes are prepared for the area.

Lastly, urban sprawl could be checked by introducing long-term urban development policies, including integration of housing and employment planning, introduction of affordable real estate/ housing schemes, construction of medium and highrise buildings supported by appropriate mortgage housing financing schemes etc.

Conclusion

In sum, we should not develop our towns and cities as if we are guaranteed unlimited supply of land. The reality is that, land is scarce and since urbanisation is unlikely to decline soon, every effort should be made by city authorities to ensure more intensive and cost-effective use of land in Ghanaian towns and cities. We need to be mindful of the fact that God indeed is not creating more land for us.

The writer is President, Christian Service University College, Kumasi