Regionalism and Urban Development Planning in Africa: Towards A Collaborative Framework for Decentralized Planning in Ghana

Abstract

The development planning and management of cities have evolved in theory and practice. Decentralized planning and regionalism are among such evolved concepts. With Ghanaian cities rapidly urbanizing, the transcendence nature of urbanization challenges continues to tests the responsiveness of the nation’s decentralized planning system-after its implementation more than two decades ago. Key among such tests is how the decentralized planning system can effectively promote collaborative planning among contiguous urbanizing local planning jurisdictions. This demands not only the regional coordination of development plans but also responsive “regionalism” among neighboring local planning and/or government authorities for them to; identify common development challenges, the impacts of their individual planning decisions on each other, and how to collaborate to mitigate the impacts of their decisions on each other. After examining the decentralized planning drawbacks and the Ghana’s urbanization challenges, this paper ends with a framework for effective   regional planning collaboration among neighboring urbanizing local government areas.

Keywords: Urbanization, Centralized and Decentralized Planning, Regionalism, Regional Planning, Collaborative Planning