Exploring the emergence and governance of new cities in Accra, Ghana

The purpose of this paper is to: (1) explore the motivations and rationales that underpin the production of new cities in Accra and (2) understand the governance arrangements for such cities. The paper adopts a non-reductionist approach underpinned by a conjunction of assemblage thinking and actor network theory to trace the emergence and governance of Airport City and Lakeside Estate in Accra, Ghana. Through qualitative research involving interviews with twenty key informants and documentary analysis, the findings indicate that the assemblage of objects, actors and rationales that underpin the production and governance of new cities in Accra bear little semblance to the neoliberal framing and privatised governance models that characterise post-colonial theorisation of urban spatial restructuring in Africa. Therefore, urban research ought to transcend inherited concepts of contemporary spatial transformation - framed on the dominant narratives of globalisation and neoliberalisation, to empirically and inductively trace the conditions under which new cities emerge and are governed in specific local contexts such as in Africa.