A ‘Better Life for All in Bricks and Mortar’: The Spatial Rationalities of Container Urbanism in Accra

Abstract

Alternative and often disruptive urban processes in the Global South, such as container urbanism, are gradually pushing urban planning institutions towards the margins of urban governance and transformation. Understanding how urban institutional actors perceive and respond to these emerging processes is thus crucial for unravelling the rationalities that actively transform the spatial configuration of cities. Drawing on the concept of spatial rationalities, this article examines the institutional dynamics of the unprecedented spatial diffusion of container urbanism in Accra, Ghana. The article makes two contributions to the literature. First, it shows that the continuation of a neoliberal urban governance agenda has shifted the institutional perception of container urbanism as a form of aberration. Second, it sheds light on how the actions by institutional actors to recuperate spatial order are often eclipsed by political interferences, creating an illusion of control in the management of urban space. Consequently, the article calls for a reassessment of impractical regulatory mechanisms that target container users and other informal modes of appropriating urban space with far-reaching consequences for urban citizenship and the right to the city.