Urban development, and emerging relations of informal property and land based authority in Accra
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Urban development, and emerging relations of informal property and land based authority in Accra. / Stacey, Paul Austin.
In: Africa, Vol. 88, No. 1, 2018, p. 63-80.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Urban development, and emerging relations of informal property and land based authority in Accra
AU - Stacey, Paul Austin
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - Rural–urban migration leads to ever increasing numbers of Africans living in informal settlements. In Accra's largest informal settlement, Old Fadama, residents by definition have no statutory rights to the land and their building activities undermine formal state law and state-recognized customary landowners. Statutory institutions are unable to enforce property rights and alternative interests emerge and organize. In multiple and fragmented ways, local stakeholders create and define their own informal relations of property and land-based authority. This article examines four cases of land transfers, building and development in the settlement that involve a variety of local, national and global actors. Their actions show the contemporaneous making and unmaking of different relations of property and land-based control and authority in the densely populated urban site. Important features of urban development in Accra are thereby shown to be variations in property relations and the multitude of actors that validate land use but that circumvent statutory institutions.
AB - Rural–urban migration leads to ever increasing numbers of Africans living in informal settlements. In Accra's largest informal settlement, Old Fadama, residents by definition have no statutory rights to the land and their building activities undermine formal state law and state-recognized customary landowners. Statutory institutions are unable to enforce property rights and alternative interests emerge and organize. In multiple and fragmented ways, local stakeholders create and define their own informal relations of property and land-based authority. This article examines four cases of land transfers, building and development in the settlement that involve a variety of local, national and global actors. Their actions show the contemporaneous making and unmaking of different relations of property and land-based control and authority in the densely populated urban site. Important features of urban development in Accra are thereby shown to be variations in property relations and the multitude of actors that validate land use but that circumvent statutory institutions.
U2 - 10.1017/S0001972017000572
DO - 10.1017/S0001972017000572
M3 - Journal article
VL - 88
SP - 63
EP - 80
JO - Africa
JF - Africa
SN - 0001-9720
IS - 1
ER -
ID: 181770346