Understanding the urban spatial structure of Sub-Saharan African cities using the case of urban development patterns of a Ghanaian city-region

Agyemang, Felix; Silva, Elisabete; Poku-Boansi, Michael

doi:10.1016/j.habitatint.2019.02.001

Cited by 59 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Globally, there are significant differences in urbanisation patterns between regions and even greater differences in the degree, rate and nature of growth of individual cities. According to Agyemang et al [25], African cities are characterised by a high degree of development spontaneity, which is shaped by a scattered pattern of urbanisation and has led to new spatial configurations. The resulting urban development pattern is often characterised by the spontaneous emergence of new centres with their own social and economic dynamics [26].…”

Section: Grasping 'African' Urbanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The resulting urban development pattern is often characterised by the spontaneous emergence of new centres with their own social and economic dynamics [26]. In contrast to spatial transformation processes in other parts of the world, the declining monocentricity in sub-Saharan African cities is therefore rather characterised by amorphousness, i.e., the lack of a clear core-periphery structure [25]. Thus, it is unclear whether the developing spatial structures correspond to existing urban (geographical) models or can be explained by them.…”

Section: Grasping 'African' Urbanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Pathways for Sustainable and Inclusive Cities in Southern and Eastern Africa through Urban Green Infrastructure?

Titz

Chiotha²

2019

Sustainability

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Cities in sub-Saharan Africa are currently confronted with a multitude, and hitherto unexperienced, magnitude of transformative phenomena such as rising inequality, exclusion, poverty and increased residency in informal settlements. These stressors are posing challenges to cities in terms of housing, infrastructure and provision of basic services as well as climate change adaptation. Despite the high dynamics and novel characteristics of city transformation, this urban transition seems to take place rather ‘quietly’ and has, so far, obviously hardly been understood or appreciated by researchers and governments. Subsequently, the multifaceted and extremely challenging problems associated with the process of urbanisation cannot be adequately addressed. Green infrastructure (GI) is currently emerging as a concept for cost-effective urban sustainability and livelihood security. Preservation and provision of accessible urban green spaces is increasingly recognised as an essential part of the liveability of cities. Extensive literature review revealed that the systematic integration of GI concepts in urban planning is seen by an increasing number of researchers as an essential approach to tackle major current and future challenges. Based on the literature review, we suggest that broadening the concept of urban GI by linking it to governance and rights-based conceptualisations will have the potential to unlock more resourceful paths for sustainable, green, and inclusive urban development of cities in Southern and Eastern Africa.

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Section: Grasping 'African' Urbanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Grasping 'African' Urbanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pathways for Sustainable and Inclusive Cities in Southern and Eastern Africa through Urban Green Infrastructure?

Titz

Chiotha²

2019

Sustainability

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“…Tourism urbanization has become an important type of novel urbanization in China, having a profound impact on the process of spatial reconstruction, especially in urban areas. Currently, studies on spatial restructuring mainly focus on the following aspects: revealing the expansion model and the types of spatial structures [1][2][3], analyzing the spatial evolution and development process [4][5][6], understanding the influencing factors [7,8] and the internal mechanism of spatial evolution [9][10][11], and exploring the quantitative measurement and the external effects of spatial evolution [12][13][14][15]. e growth of a city is a two-way process of external structure expansion and internal function reorganization.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial Complex Morphological Evolution and Influencing Factors for Mountain and Seaside Resort Tourism Destinations

Wang

et al. 2020

Complexity

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Spatial restructuring of tourism destinations is important not only for optimizing the spatial structure but also for promoting its sustainable development. This study adopted participatory rural assessment (PRA), GIS spatial analysis, and Google Earth remote sensing images as the main research methodology. The case studies of mountain resort destination, Huangshui Town, and seaside resort destination, Jinshitan, were analyzed. The study contributes to complex morphological evolution from the perspectives of external structure expansion and internal function reconstruction, revealing the spatial characteristics and explaining the influencing factors. The results showed that (1) in the process of tourism development, these two places have experienced large-scale growth of construction land and expansion of spatial scope. The external spatial structure of Huangshui Town is concentrated in the center and is scattered outward, changing from the form of a strip to a radiating pattern and finally to clusters. The spatial layout of Jinshitan has shifted from scattered to concentrated, changing from scattered to a strip along the coastline. (2) In particular, the internal functional structures of the two places have transitioned from a single residential function to a multicomposite function that integrates accommodation, dining, and entertainment. Among them, Huangshui Town is an “axial belt + group type” structure, and Jinshitan is a “wave type” structure. (3) The results also showed that natural factors such as traffic, terrain, rivers, lakes, and coastlines and anthropogenic factors such as government intervention and community participation are the main factors affecting the evolution of the spatial form of tourism destinations. The two tourist destinations in the study represent mountain resort type and coastal resort type, thereby showing that the spatial structure evolution model has certain typicality and representativeness.

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“…This paper argues that it is pressing to establish an ecological compensation mechanism to regulate rural-urban land conversion and maintain human ecological well-being.Sustainability 2020, 12, 3378 2 of 17 to provide various ES to human beings is gradually diminished, with the potential to further reduce human well-being [1,[9][10][11].Globally, it is one of the major challenges for policy-makers to keep a trade-off between economic development and agro-ecosystem protection. In most developing countries, especially in southern Africa and Asia, rapid urbanization and increasing human population are driving massive land transformation [12][13][14]. With the largest population and relatively scarce land resources, China has witnessed a significant growth in urbanization [15,16].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Globally, it is one of the major challenges for policy-makers to keep a trade-off between economic development and agro-ecosystem protection. In most developing countries, especially in southern Africa and Asia, rapid urbanization and increasing human population are driving massive land transformation [12][13][14]. With the largest population and relatively scarce land resources, China has witnessed a significant growth in urbanization [15,16].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying Ecological Well-Being Loss under Rural–Urban Land Conversion: A Study from Choice Experiments in China

Han

Min

2020

Sustainability

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Rural-urban land conversion has led to the degradation of agricultural system ecological services, and therefore human ecological well-being. There is a need to transform the non-marketed value of ecosystem services provision into a monetary loss of ecological well-being in rural-urban land conversion, which could serve as a basis for ecological compensation. In this paper, a choice experiment method is adopted to investigate the willingness-to-pay (WTP) of rural and urban residents in six cities of three provinces selected from different regions in China. The results reveal that the attributes reflecting the ecological well-being of rural and urban residents are experiencing different degrees of decline. Two attributes, health and security, show the most obvious decline among all ecological well-being attributes for urban residents. In view of stakeholders, rural residents are facing a greater decline in ecological well-being than urban residents, which is mainly driven by their different linkages and interactions with the agro-ecosystem. In terms of regional comparisons, residents in the central region (Hubei Province) of China are subject to the sharpest decline in ecological well-being, followed by those living in the western region (Guizhou Province) and the eastern region (Guangdong Province). These differences are basically determined by their land resource conditions and socioeconomic circumstances. This paper argues that it is pressing to establish an ecological compensation mechanism to regulate rural-urban land conversion and maintain human ecological well-being.Sustainability 2020, 12, 3378 2 of 17 to provide various ES to human beings is gradually diminished, with the potential to further reduce human well-being [1,[9][10][11].Globally, it is one of the major challenges for policy-makers to keep a trade-off between economic development and agro-ecosystem protection. In most developing countries, especially in southern Africa and Asia, rapid urbanization and increasing human population are driving massive land transformation [12][13][14]. With the largest population and relatively scarce land resources, China has witnessed a significant growth in urbanization [15,16]. In recent years, ecological risks caused by rural-urban land conversion have attracted growing attention. The Central Government of the Communist Party of China (CPC) put forward the strategy of ecological civilization to reconcile the relationship between human and nature, taking "optimization of the spatial layout", "effective regulation of development scale", and "improvement of the ecology system" as main guidelines of future development mode. It is increasingly presenting not only as a response to eco-environment degradation in China but as a vision for our global future [17].Researchers have been sharing growing concerns about the impacts of rural-urban land conversion on agricultural ES and their impacts on human well-being. Several studies have adopted physical assessment methods [18][19][20] to uncover the relations between agri...

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Understanding the urban spatial structure of Sub-Saharan African cities using the case of urban development patterns of a Ghanaian city-region

Cited by 59 publications

References 40 publications

Pathways for Sustainable and Inclusive Cities in Southern and Eastern Africa through Urban Green Infrastructure?

Pathways for Sustainable and Inclusive Cities in Southern and Eastern Africa through Urban Green Infrastructure?

Spatial Complex Morphological Evolution and Influencing Factors for Mountain and Seaside Resort Tourism Destinations

Quantifying Ecological Well-Being Loss under Rural–Urban Land Conversion: A Study from Choice Experiments in China

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