Sociology and Anthropology Vol. 4(11), pp. 987 - 1002
DOI: 10.13189/sa.2016.041106
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Feasibility of Slum Redevelopment in Ghana: The Regenerative Approach

Esther Duah ^1,*, J. T. Bugri ^2
1 Ghana Institution of Surveyors, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana
² Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana

ABSTRACT

Slums are tagged as home for the urban poor and have been described as one of the world's most life threatening environments because of their extremely poor environmental and housing conditions. Their existence has often caught the attention of political leaders because of their obvious drag on the national development agenda of developing countries. The nature of the slum problem has often led to calls for "slum-free" environments from politicians and development practitioners alike. Yet, from the perspectives of slum dwellers themselves, slums are places of socio-economic livelihoods in which they do recognize the insufficiency of their environments but possess limited capacities in changing these conditions. They appear crippled by the hopelessness of poverty and inadequacy to cause any such dramatic change in their environments. The United Nations millennium development goal 7 target 11 gives the task of achieving significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020. This emphasizes the world's recognition of the need to actively intervene to bring about improvement in the lives of slum dwellers. This paper discusses the approaches that have been used in dealing with the slum problem in the country which has been retrogressive so far as against the prospects of the regenerative redevelopment of slums. Detailed empirical data on the Anloga-Sobolo township in the Kumasi Metropolis is used to examine the feasibility of regenerative slum redevelopment in Ghana as propounded extensively in literature. The township is characterized by haphazard development of an originally planned township due largely to rapid urbanization and weaknesses in land policies and planning system. The subject secondary data was primarily collected between 2009 and 2010 for a case study sample a sample size of 180 individual stakeholders and three (3) institutional stakeholders. It is the conclusion of the paper that while slum redevelopment is feasible in Ghana, the regenerative redevelopment approach is more likely to attain "slum-friendly" environments as opposed to the slum clearance approach based on the notion of "slum-free" environments. It is thus recommended that political will to commit resources to a priority programme of slum redevelopment in the long-term by governments is needed to make headway in slum redevelopment in Ghana and the developing world as a whole.

KEYWORDS
Slum, Feasibility, Regenerative Redevelopment, Urbanization, Ghana

Cite This Paper in IEEE or APA Citation Styles
(a). IEEE Format:
[1] Esther Duah , J. T. Bugri , "Feasibility of Slum Redevelopment in Ghana: The Regenerative Approach," Sociology and Anthropology, Vol. 4, No. 11, pp. 987 - 1002, 2016. DOI: 10.13189/sa.2016.041106.

(b). APA Format:
Esther Duah , J. T. Bugri (2016). Feasibility of Slum Redevelopment in Ghana: The Regenerative Approach. Sociology and Anthropology, 4(11), 987 - 1002. DOI: 10.13189/sa.2016.041106.