THEORIZING URBAN TRANSFORMATION AND ADAPTATION IN KUMASI, GHANA: REFLECTIONS ON SOME OF THE FORCES SHAPING AN ORDINARY CITY

Abstract Advertising billboards in Kumasi are a reminder of the extent of the penetration of market forces in everyday life (commodification). The built environment is awash with signs and symbols, sending mixed messages and images of goods and services that promises a better life. These images seem oblivious to the lived experiences of the majority in Kumasi. While billboards serve primarily to promote goods and services, including religion, they also play an important role in diverting attention and focus from the drudgery of everyday real-lives of ordinary citizens by redirecting focus to sense gratification and aspiration. The main research question has to do with trying to understand the impact of commodification in this and similar cities in Africa as a contribution to African urbanism. There are also concerns about the impact of ethical implications about psychological effects of visual pollution and the constant bombarding of the senses. In Kumasi, such spaces also serve to entrench existing class distinction by providing an avenue for memorializing important individuals in society. This research stays on the surface as an analytical approach. It illustrates how we might interpret the surface more seriously in our analysis of the contemporary city in terms of the silences and reminders of past exclusionary colonial re-presentations of the city. The research adopted random interviews with the inhabitants, traversing the city and field observations, and taking photos analogous to a flâneur. It is argued that the invisible city of the marginalized and poor seems to always make an unwelcome intrusion on such reserved spaces. Such invisible spaces also form an integral part of albeit unacknowledged cityscape of Kumasi and similar African cities. The aim of the research is twofold. It is to shine a spotlight on the coincidence of pervasive commodification – as a condition of modern life including spiritual malaise – and the rise of a media culture even in far-flung cities like Kumasi. Secondly, it is to make a broader contribution to urban studies and African urbanism in particular. It suggests the need to explore similar dynamics in other African cities with purpose to explore a decommodified human-centered African urbanism as part of the `right to the city`