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‘Everybody is Taking Their Security in Their Own Hands’: Exploring Everyday Urban Safety Perceptions and Realities in Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana

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Abstract

There are concerns that responses to urban safety are gradually reinforcing socio-spatial inequalities, with suggestions emphasising community-institutional collaborations for promoting safer urban communities. Yet, the quotidian realities that underpin residents’ lived experiences are scantly used in urban safety strategies, despite that official crime data are often unavailable and outdated for many urban communities of the global south. Based on in-depth interviews with residents and officials in the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis, this paper explores residents’ everyday urban safety perceptions and responses to unravel their safety realities and to offer insights for building safer communities. Findings show that safety perceptions and responses permeate residents’ everyday urban life and are enmeshed within socio-economic inequalities and the ethos of city planning and security agencies. This paper argues that planning and other public authorities need a strategic shift that valorises the everyday as a crucial source of knowledge on the socio-economic and spatial conditions that undergird residents’ everyday experiences of safety and as a basis for collaborative safety strategies.

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Building a new generation of Academics in Africa “BANGA-Africa” with funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography and Earth Science, University of Environment and Sustainable Development, Somanya, Ghana

    Louis Kusi Frimpong

  2. Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

    Seth Asare Okyere & Michihiro Kita

  3. Department of City and Regional Planning, University of Memphis, Memphis, USA

    Stephen Kofi Diko

  4. School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, Australia

    Matthew Abunyewah

  5. Department of Geography and Resource Development, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana

    Victor Boateng

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  1. Louis Kusi Frimpong
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  2. Seth Asare Okyere
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  6. Michihiro Kita
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Correspondence to Louis Kusi Frimpong.

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Frimpong, L.K., Okyere, S.A., Diko, S.K. et al. ‘Everybody is Taking Their Security in Their Own Hands’: Exploring Everyday Urban Safety Perceptions and Realities in Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana. Urban Forum 33, 245–265 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-021-09443-7

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