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Regimes of accumulation and the production of the built environment of Cantonments, Accra-Tema City-Region

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Abstract

Sub-Saharan African cities have experienced remarkable transformations in their built environments over the past two decades. Ghana’s Accra-Tema City-Region (ATCR) is undergoing such a transformation in spaces produced to house the administrative, business, and military arms of colonialism. We map the production of the built environment of one such space, Cantonments, under two regimes of accumulation: colonial (including neocolonial) and globalization. We attempt to explain the production of the built environment of Cantonments under globalization by referring to two emerging frameworks: frontier urbanization and speculative urbanism. Based on these frameworks' futility, we offer an alternative explanation for the changing built environment of Cantonments. Our explanation is based on the interaction of a more footloose global capital and local agency, realizing an opportunity to profit. Ghana is still an exporter of ecologic and geologic resources to the core and semi-periphery, and a market for manufactured goods from these places. Transnational Corporations (TNCs) operating in the country are unwilling to provide housing for their expatriate and local senior employees because they have become footloose in their operations. Within the context of spatial policy, local capitalists have stepped in to meet the housing needs of TNCs thus continuing to produce Cantonments as a high-income residential enclave. In the process, the Ga ethnic group has been dispossessed of lands in Cantonments whereas local capitalists have accumulated wealth. We highlight the right to the city implications of our findings and conclude with the need to contextualize emerging theories in the context of local empirical evidence.

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  1. Miami University, Oxford, OH, 45056, USA

    Ian E. A. Yeboah & John K. Maingi

  2. University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada

    Godwin Arku

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Yeboah, I.E.A., Arku, G. & Maingi, J.K. Regimes of accumulation and the production of the built environment of Cantonments, Accra-Tema City-Region. GeoJournal 87, 3967–3986 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-021-10469-4

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