Peri-urban transformations : Changing land markets and (in)security in peri-urban Accra, Ghana

Asafo, Divine

Abstract

This chapter analyses recent transitions within Accra’s peri-urban land market. It explores pressures on peripherally located land in the context of significant affordability issues in wider Accra and the ways in which land originally owned and managed by customary authorities in the main is increasingly the focus and object of a proliferation of new actors in the city’s land market. Speaking to the speculative logic, the chapter distinguishes between primary land providers and delivery channels (including chiefs and family heads controlling customary land), and newer entrants including real estate companies, welfare associations, individuals, land agents and landguards. These ‘secondary’ land providers and intermediaries form part of the complex set of actors at the centre of rapidly rising land prices and stories of land-grabbing. Much of the housing being built is done so individually outside of the formal land and planning mechanisms, and these changes to Accra’s peripheries directly reflect the transitioning and auto-constructed logics of African urban peripheries.

Citation

Asafo, D. (2024). Peri-urban transformations : Changing land markets and (in)security in peri-urban Accra, Ghana. In Living the urban periphery : infrastructure, everyday life and economic change in African city-regions (186-206). Manchester University Press. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526171221

• Online Publication Date: Jul 30, 2024
• Publication Date: Jul 30, 2024
• Deposit Date: Sep 24, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 1, 2024
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Pages: 186-206
• Series Title: Global urban transformations
• Book Title: Living the urban periphery : infrastructure, everyday life and economic change in African city-regions
• Chapter Number: 7
• ISBN: 9781526171214
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526171221
• Keywords: Peri-urban Accra; Legitimacy; Tenure (in)security; Land markets; Land providers; Transitioning periphery; Auto-constructed periphery; Speculative periphery; Ghana
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4834769