âI Have a Vision of a Modern City, a Properly Planned Cityâ: Neoliberal Planning and Speculative Practices in Ghanaâs Oil City

Geertrui Vannoppen

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9 âI Have a Vision of a Modern City, a Properly Planned Cityâ: Neoliberal Planning and Speculative Practices in Ghanaâs Oil City

In: Oil-Age Africa

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Geertrui Vannoppen

Geertrui Vannoppen
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 211â231

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004530065_010

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Abstract

Sekondi-Takoradi is a Ghanaian city with many faces, stuck in the past with a harbour and a town planning structure dating from the 1930s, but also thrown into the future with its new identity as the oil city. The story of Sekondi-Takoradi and King City is a story of petro-urbanism: urbanisation fuelled by oil moneyâa term popular with Takoradiâs inhabitants. The active brandâmaking of Sekondi-Takoradi as the newest oil city attracts various investors to the old harbour town. One of the many real estate investment projects mushrooming all over the city is the King City project, a new town development on the periphery of Sekondi-Takoradi. The King City project is propagated as a public-private partnership with the chief of Takoradi, and a tellâtale case for the speculative city that Sekondi-Takoradi has become. Takoradiâs chief is one of the many players in the city who has become involved in urban management, in the process rewriting his (traditional) identity as chief, and constantly seeking to legitimise his authority alongside power players such as NGOs and oil companies. Similarly, the oil cityâs inhabitants actively anticipate and imagine possible futures for themselves. The King City project is viewed as an opportunity for development by community members, an opportunity to become part of the oil city and its economy, to become urban citizens. In analysing the case of King City within the broader resource environment of Takoradi, I focus on the transformative power of oil as it generates processes of value formation, social configurations and alternative meaningâmaking practices. I use the urban development project King City as a case to describe the virtual temporal quality of petroâurbanism and how it is instrumentalised by the various actors involved.

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Oil-Age Africa

Critical Reflections on Oil Politics, Resource Economies and Extractive Communities

Series:Â Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies, Volume: 29

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004530065

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 11 Oct 2022

Subjects
- African Studies
- Social Sciences
  - Sociology & Anthropology
  - African Studies

Front Matter

Opening Reflections

Part 1 Oil Politics and the Rentier State

Part 2 The Oil Industry and the Enclave Economy

Part 3 Oil Communities and Rural-Urban Transformations

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9 âI Have a Vision of a Modern City, a Properly Planned Cityâ: Neoliberal Planning and Speculative Practices in Ghanaâs Oil City

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Oil-Age Africa

Critical Reflections on Oil Politics, Resource Economies and Extractive Communities

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9 âI Have a Vision of a Modern City, a Properly Planned Cityâ: Neoliberal Planning and Speculative Practices in Ghanaâs Oil City