Rethinking planning in post-colonial cities: Institutional hybridity, power, and conflict

This paper introduces a framework of critical institutional hybridity as a theoretical lens for understanding urban planning in postcolonial contexts, where statutory and customary governance systems actively compete, overlap, and reshape urban landscapes. While mainstream planning typically seeks to harmonize these tensions, I argue that hybridity is not a dysfunction to be resolved but a structural condition planners must directly engage. Drawing insights from agonistic planning theory, I analyze the failed Kwabenya landfill project in Ghana to demonstrate how contestation, boundary negotiation, and institutional maneuvering fundamentally reshape planning outcomes. Instead of eliminating these hybrid dynamics, planners should focus on institutional designs that explicitly structure its contestation, thereby enhancing public accountability and enabling more adaptive governance.