‘In the neighbourhood’: social solidarity and the politics of urban governance in colonial Accra

Abstract This article argues that the infrastructural and regulatory politics of Accra’s town council in the early twentieth century highlight competing and transforming understandings of ‘neighbour’ and ‘neighbourhood’. British officials and their elite African allies on the town council championed new forms of physical, social and economic infrastructure, which they touted as ‘modern’ improvements that would bring Accra in line with other major cities and improve life for its inhabitants. Accra residents did not reject all reform or innovation, but they did insist that urban development take place on their terms and in ways that would support their interests, informed by indigenous notions of civic virtue, social responsibility, moral community and spatial organization.