Abstract
Urban green spaces (UGS) are often promoted as a pathway to achieving urban sustainability. In relation to climate change impacts, they offer both mitigating and adaptive pathways for cities. Yet, increasing UGS is set against other development needs that confront cities of the Global South. This can result in a prioritization conundrum in urban planning processes. Using data from a questionnaire administered to 400 residents of the Kumasi Metropolis, Ghana, this paper examines residents’ awareness and priorities of UGS for conflicting rationalities and explains how this can engender a prioritization conundrum. The study finds conflicts in residents’ rationalities of UGS, manifesting as residents’ low prioritization of UGS despite their experiences of climate change impacts and awareness of UGS benefits including its role in tackling climate change impacts. Here, the prioritization conundrum concerns how to account for residents’ awareness and priorities in urban planning and plan for goals that residents do not consider a priority. Such a conundrum can derail efforts to use UGS to tackle climate change impacts. Hence, to navigate the prioritization conundrum, this paper emphasizes co-benefits to adduce two implications. First, effective mainstreaming of UGS co-benefits into urban planning is imperative, which can be achieved by harmonizing residents’ priorities with climate change goals during plan preparation for the Kumasi Metropolis and actively engaging residents in UGS planning. Secondly, traversing the prioritization conundrum is dependent on the capacity to effectively mainstream UGS co-benefits in urban planning—without which planning for UGS to tackle climate change impacts can be hindered.
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Source: Maps created by Author. *These maps do not consider changes in regions and districts after 2017
Source: Field Survey, 2018
Source: Field Survey, 2018
Source: Field Survey, 2018
Source: Photo taken by Author in 2018
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Notes
This research considers the Kumasi Metropolis as it was officially demarcated before November 2017 when new local government jurisdictions were defined and redefined.
Those 15 + years were initially used as a proxy for those 18 + years during the sample size determination. However, persons 18 + years of age were selected for interviews since the focus was on adults, and the legal age for adults in Ghana is 18 + years. This did not change the sample size estimates as evident from Table 1 where the results are not different from the 18 + years estimates.
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Stephen Kofi Diko led the data collection and conducted the data analysis, writing, and revisions of this manuscript.
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Stephen Kofi Diko is an Editorial Board member of Socio-Ecological Practice Research (SEPR). He was not involved in the peer-review or handling of the manuscript, and has no other competing interests to disclose.
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Diko, S.K. Urban green space planning in the Kumasi Metropolis, Ghana: a prioritization conundrum and its co-benefits solution. Socio Ecol Pract Res 5, 49–62 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42532-022-00135-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42532-022-00135-5