Little is written in the public spaces within the context of West Africa. As this piece discusses, however, engaging this topic opens up important issues of cultural bias, the importance of streets, and alternative views on the value of formally planned public spaces.
Article and photos by Stacy Passmore, re:place Magazine
(as originally posted on Planning Pool)
Of the 163 public spaces included on the Project for Public Spaces‘s list of “The World’s Best” only a single nomination is located on the African continent (Greenmarket Square in Capetown, South Africa). The other 162 parks, squares and plazas are European, North American and a handful are South or Central American. Is the absence of African pubic spaces on this list due to lack of recognition? Does this expose a European cultural proclivity for public space? Or perhaps there are not enough African public spaces that meet the standards of this review, which is a cultural standard in itself. At best, we must recognize that the details of African urbanism, such as public space and parks, are relatively un-discussed, and therefore may have an untold story. Little is written about public space in Africa and even less in West Africa. Formally, what public spaces physically exist today, linger from European colonial designs or privatized development. A rare example of an official public space such as the Black Star Square in downtown Accra might even be considered a failure, as it operates more like a political monument and statement of success than a place for people to freely gather and recreate.
It would also be easy to make an assumption that the lack of public spaces is relative to the lack of resources. However, during urban design conversations with Ghanaians and Nigerians, it became clear to me that the discourse on the existence (or absence) of formal public spaces and urban parks often has an underlining cultural bias, and is specifically a doctrine of the Western town planning tradition. While extensive research has shown the social, environmental and economic benefits of these formalized public spaces in Western culture, it should be recognized that it takes a different form and meaning in a West African city. This will be a critical distinction in the new Anam City in Nigeria where landscape and green ‘open’ spaces are a dominant part of the urbanism.
Historically, West African city centers grew out of the courtyard space in front of the Chief’s palace, where a plaza would double as the weekly market. This allowed for many uses including commerce, social gathering, but also surveillance and security. Nat Amarteifio, former Accra mayor, architect and historian talks about the scarcity of successfully planned public space in Accra, and also the importance of public urban space for developing cultural capital. He compares the European, a rationalized, imperialized and separated approach to the West African, which he describes as family-linked, sacred, and about generating security.
As we discussed public spaces further, my Ghanaian colleagues (urban planners, architects and engineers) argued that parks were not important in their culture, and that they were a feature brought by Europeans. They expressed concern that the open spaces would be taken over by kiosks and vendors, and also reminded me that activities like picnics on grassy lawns were more a British tradition than a Ghanaian one. As it became clear that Ghanaians had a different perspective on the role of open space and parks in their city, they recognized that special public spaces do exist, but that they were more informal than planned, like the Black Star Square. Thus, in spite of some opposition to the idea of formal public spaces, my West African friends do acknowledge social spaces and a places for common ground – and this is found in the streetscape.
Streets, though structurally different from parks or plazas, fulfill the same social need and become the ‘living tissue’ of West African placemaking. As sites for ceremonies such as funeral processions, masquerade, games and play, club meetings, and weddings, streets are equitable and accessible. Because many ceremonies and festivals are processions and take over the streets, it allows the whole community to participate (or at least observe), with crowds spilling and carrying the movement of the event. We saw informal spaces such as taxis parks, street kiosks, markets, beaches, and football pitches fulfilling the same use. The consistently high temperature also makes it very difficult to want to spend much time in a large un-shaded open area, thus trees are extremely powerful attractions that automatically create informal gathering spaces; the wide branches forming the space of an outdoor room. Larger conservation-style parks exist, but they are disjointed from daily life and are treated like sanctuaries, (Kakum or Mole in Ghana) functionally operating for tourists.
Running in parallel to the physical public space discourse is German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas’ theory of the public sphere, or the spaceless network of relationships and information sharing that is generated through communication. Public sphere is extremely well developed in West African culture and accentuated due to traditions of oral history, verbal navigation and the now dominating mobile technologies. Our designs should consider how the strength of these digital connections may interface with the need for physical meeting places? And alternatively if human connection in itself doesn’t draw people physically together, what will? Cell phone charging stations and Wifi hotspots, probably.
Thus, as designers and planners of public spaces in Nigeria and around the world, we must be careful not to just re-seed the colonial plaza or lazily provide any space that is not multifunctional and layered with many uses and systems. We must also identify when public landscapes are normative and related to culture, and emphasize this in the design through flexibility. If the urban public space is an ecologically functioning one, the design (and process) will have to self-inform about behavior in order to generate respect, allowing the community to take responsibility for maintenance and care, and know that it is not just another open space for a kiosk. Because somewhere rooted in our quest for open spaces is the notion that it is a symbol of justice, or a place that people and resources exist equally on the same ground and can be expressed or acted in freedom – like the West African street. Parks also are a symbol of quality and beauty, and therefore should be equally accessible to everyone in a society. In particular, we should look at these streets as a unit of balance drawing upon their vibrancy, flexibility and diversity if we want to develop a conversation about the future of public space in West Africa.
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More images of Ghanaian and Nigerian cities can be viewed at the author’s Flickr Page.
