Ningo Prampram: A Legible Urban Space Reflective Of A Distinct Identity And Cultural Narratives

Ningo Prampram: A Legible Urban Space Reflective Of A Distinct Identity And Cultural Narratives Stephanie I. Ete Academy of Architecture December 2019

Ningo Prampram: A Legible Urban Space Reflective Of A Distinct Identity And Cultural Narratives Stephanie I. Ete Academy of Architecture December 2019

A city is made by its people, within the bounds of the possibilities that it can offer them: it has a distinctive identity that makes it much more than an agglomeration of buildings.

(Sudjic, 2016)

Figure 1: Unpaved Road in Ningo Prampram Photo by the Author

Abstract

This essay will articulate that the emerging city of Ningo Prampram should be a legible urban space; that either reflects or allows the city dweller to express cultural narratives in the urban environment. In 2016, UN Habitat and a team of five Dutch Architecture, Landscape and Urban Design practices, proposed an extension plan for the Ningo Prampram District in Ghana, to accommodate a population of up to 1.8 million in an area of 120km2 by the year 2050 (UN Habitat, 2016, p. 18). With the implementation of this proposal and surge in population, it can be assumed that the character of Ningo Prampram will drastically alter.

The fear that proceeds, is whether the emerging city of Ningo Prampram, will regrettable develop into an African urban fantasy (Watson, 2013a) that negates the essence of the real city (Pieterse, 2011) at the hands of its planners and architects or will the designers take on the responsibility of enforcing a language of urban legibility that reveals and sustains the distinct identity of Ningo Prampram. By shedding light on the existing layers of cultural meaning and expression, as well as the markers of daily life that form the distinct identity of Ningo Prampram, this paper will advocate for the latter and implore architects, designers and planners to meaningfully grasp the character of the city spaces that they design.

A Legible Urban Space, and for whom?

In the African Realities Lecture series given to the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, the British-Nigerian filmmaker, Michael Uwemedimo, described urban space as “semiotic”, meaning it has the ability to signify; narrate; point to and tell the stories of the place and the peoples that inhabit the area (Uwemedimo, 2019).

This application of the modern theory of semiotics onto urban space and architecture was notably explored by French literary theorist, Roland Barthes, who introduced the understanding that “anything in culture can be a sign or send a specific meaning” (Bychkov, n.d).

Barthes describes “the city as a discourse… that speaks to its inhabitants …[like] a poem” (Barthes, 1993, pp. 415,418), implying that the prescribing of the city by designers and planners, through the means of architecture and objects belonging to the built environment, “should focus on…the production of meaning, values, feelings, ideologies and power through the articulation and organisation of space” (Terzoglou, 2018, p. 122). Therefore, the

city dweller is able to interpret the built environment subjectively, suggesting that the city or urban space requires a legibility that the inhabitant of the space should be able to understand through the articulation of the built form.

This structuralist view presents the city’s architecture or rather the production of the built environment solely as a language system able to reveal meaning. This is a more reductive or limited application of urban semiology than what Uwemedimo alluded to in his lecture. The idea that urban space is narrative and can reveal the stories of a place and its peoples, insinuate the necessity of time to enable the layering of meanings through a developed and ongoing history. In his essay, Architecture as Meaningful Language: Space, Place and Narrativity, Dr. Nikolaos-Ion Terzoglou suggests that “The city is an open work. To decode its multiple meanings, the user must provide his or her own interpretation. […]

To become a meaningful system, architecture needs the passage of time. Uses and functions, appropriations and changes specify the various messages that a place communicates. Through time, architecture is transformed from a language (system) to a narrative (oration, announcement)” (Terzoglou, 2018, pp. 122, 123).

We can then pair this understanding of narrative with the idea of the lebenswelt, a termed coined by Edmund Husserl in his work, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology and refers to the space of experience or “a mental space that ascribes meaning to a place, capturing the qualitative experience of locality” (Terzoglou, 2018, p. 126). It can be more simply understood, as the space where the rituals of daily

life or cultural narratives exist within. Terzoglou suggest that the architect, urban planners and cocreators of the built environment, “should read the lebenswelt of a place before building; this process of reading the plot of place […] would ultimately reveal the ‘atmospheres’ and the character of a place, and it would navigate architectural creation to contextualise a proposal appropriate to its ethos.” (Terzoglou, 2018, p. 128).

From this we can derive, that a legible urban space is one in which the built environment is a language system able to convey meaning to its inhabitants and city users; and when that meaning is layered with time; changes in society, use or form, this system of the city transforms into a narrative that is an oration of its peoples, objects, cultures and histories. The urban space must also be legible to architects and planners who will design within its context in order to continue to serve the lebenswelt or sense of the place, within which, new narratives of the cultural world might be added.

It must be contended, however, that the weight of this theory of urban legibility is derived from the works European or ‘Western’ scholars and theorists and this paper aims to promote the value of such principles in the context of an African city. Aware of this dichotomy, attention has been paid to include the voices of the wider African diaspora and those focus on African Urbanism; practitioners and scholars alike, to give greater nuance to the argument for a legible African urbanism and more specifically in the context of Ningo Prampram.

Figure 2: Map showing the different settlement towns of Ningo Prampram (Ghana Statistical Service, 2014)

Figure 3: Ningo Prampram District Assembly Building. Photo taken by Author

Figure 5: V-Pub is a local bar that plays a significant role in the festivals of Prampram, often hosting street concerts. Photo credit: unknown

Figure 4: Ningo Prampram Police Station Photo credit: Israel Laryea, 2018

Figure 6: Fort Vernon Photo Credit: Owula Kpakpo

The Distinct Identity of Ningo Prampram With this understanding how should we address the distinct identity of Ningo Prampram and its legibility both to its inhabitants, current and future, as well as to the prescribers and designers of the future built environment. The district of Ningo Prampram, in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area on the coast of Ghana is made up of several the settlement towns, including the capital town of Prampram. The total district population is approximately 71,000 (Ghana Statistical Service, 2014) and the predominant ethnic group is the Ga-Dangme peoples, although the rapid growth of the Accra metropolitan region is diversifying the people groups occupying the space.

The UN Habitat proposal makes note of this and thus the New Ningo Prampram is “planned as an inclusive city� (UN Habitat, 2016, p. 31). Regrettably, this statement and the proposal, thereafter, lacks any specificity to the peoples that form the narrative, character and identity of Ningo Prampram which is an essential reading of place in order to best facilitate space for them in the built environment. A legible urban strategy for Ningo

Prampram, firstly should respect, represent and then facilitate the lives of the people as it sees them (Elleh, 2011, p. 26).

Figure 7 Community Bench/ Gathering location. The mural displays the words "Prampram We Dey" meaning Prampram, we are here, signifying a local pride and identity found in belonging to the town. A pocket of the town occupied by its youth (PrampramToday, 2019)

When speaking of the Ga-Dangme peoples, Professor Nola Marshall, maintains that the culture of the Ga peoples is “not housed in libraries, but stored in the memories of human beings who pass down the history, stories, religious knowledge, prayers, rituals, and the moral values of society without recourse to written records”(Bourgault, 2003, p. 109). Marshall elaborates that “this knowledge is most often transmitted during social interaction through traditional cultural expression.” (Marshall, 2017). At a preliminary glance it might be assumed then, that the cultural narratives of the dominant ethnic group in Ningo Prampram do not lend themselves to an articulation in built form. However, it can be challenged that the cultural narratives, both traditional and contemporary, occupy and exert themselves in the urban realm The Ga people have many festivals running from April to early October of which the main festivals are Homowo and Kpeledzoo. These festivals recall the early histories of the GaDangme people and are celebrated through feast, parades, performances and activities that consume the urban environment and are an example of the “griotic storytelling traditions” (Addo & Gibbs, 2001, p. 136) that are an integral part of Ghanaian social life. In Prampram town, roads are shut down in preferences for performances and displays, during which the community meanders through the town’s urban core making stops along the way at notable locations. These locations include, though are not limited to, the Ningo Prampram District Assembly building,

Figure 8: The Homowo Festival Parade making a stop in front of the Ningo Prampram District Assembly Building (Annan & Akrong, 2019)

Figure 9: Street Concert outside V-Pub (Figure 4). Young people occupying the urban environment. Photo Credit: V - Entertainment Consult

the home of the chieftaincy stool, the old police station and Fort Vernon. In and of themselves, the architecture of these buildings suggest very little about the cultural space of Ningo Prampram but it is the developed attachments denoting symbols of power and history that have created a collection of urban objects that contribute to the narrative of Ningo Prampram in which the “society signifies itself� (Greimas, 1979 as cited in Terzoglou, 2018, p. 122) in the pockets of urban space.

Following in the same manner, younger generations and newer people groups have also found ways to articulate their cultural narratives either in the pockets of urban space (Figure 7&9); in full the appropriation of the urban environment, or in built form, all of which can be mapped (Figure 11) in the existing localities of Ningo Prampram. But does the UN Habitat plan acknowledge or make space for this type of urban occupation that dwellers participate in?

Figure 10: Kpeledzoo / Kpledomi Festival processes from the main street on to the coast front near to Fort Vernon (Figure 6) Screenshot from Blema TV footage courtsey of Youtube.

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by African American “Returnee” American “Returnee” to teach local to teach local children andgreat tourists about great children and tourists about AfricanThe historic African historic figures. area figures. The area is popular with African American is popular with African American Tourists or “Returnees” Tourists or “Returnees”

Prampram Prampram Town - Town Blortsitsonya Street is the entrance Blortsitsonya Street to is the entrance to New Ningo NewTown Ningo Town the Prampram Town along which the along which the the Prampram Town festival processions take processions place. It is take place. It is festival backbone of thebackbone town around which of the town around which most of the informal/convience retail most of the informal/convience retail kiosks are positioned kiosks along. are positioned along.

Ningo PrampramNingo District Prampram AssemblyDistrict Assembly

Homowo & Kpledomi Homowo Festival & Kpledomi in Festival in Prampram Prampram The Traditional festival The Traditional parades travel festival parades travel along this core street along and this core the people street and the people occupy pockets occupy of the urban pocketsspace of the to urban space to dance and perform dance rites.andTheperform procession rites. The procession goes throughout goes the town throughout and some the town and some festivals culminatefestivals at the culminate Prampramat the Prampram beach beach

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Fort Vernon Fort Vernon Remains of the Remains Fort setup of by thethe Fort setup by the British in Prampram andin occuppied British Prampram and occuppied between 1742-1816. between It facilitated the It facilitated the 1742-1816.

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This body of water This isbody the of water is the physical barrier that physical separates barrier that separates Prampram town Prampram and New Ningo. town and New Ningo.

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Comci Beach Comci Beach Many designed Many designed opportunites for opportunites gathering for gathering and meeting along and the meeting along the beachside beachside

Figure 11: Cultural Landscape Map of Prampram and New Ningo Towns.

Produced by the Author

Interrogating the Legibility of the UN Habitat Plan Figure 12: Functional Zoning Plan (UN Habitat, 2016)

Figure 13: UN Habitat Masterplan Proposal (UN Habitat, 2016)

The UN Habitat plan superimposes a grid structure as the basis for infrastructure and strategic growth to arrange Ningo Prampram’s urban environment. According to Markus Appenzeller of MLA+, one of the firms to work on the proposal, the grid is a system that is universal and grid-like systems have been implemented in many cultures over the course of history, proving its organisational value “independent of a local culture” (Appenzeller, 2019). The implication of Appenzeller’s remarks is that the grid proposal is a legible urban system for the masses; for technical professionals like planners, architects and designers who can use this system as a basis to continue to design within and also consistent with how people have self-organised for centuries.

This admittedly avoids specificity to the Ningo Prampram area and fails to read the existing language system of the real city (Pieterse, 2011). Such an approach would likely be condemned by African urban scholars such as Edgar Pieterse, Vanessa Watson and Nnamdi Elleh. Though the UN Habitat plan opts against a singular speculative urban vision (Goldman, 2011), it “bears little relationship with what is on the ground.” (Watson, 2013b)

A poignant observation that can be made from the festival parades of Ningo Prampram is the meandering and weaving of the peoples through the urban context. Blortsitsonya Street, the main axis of Prampram town and its bending and organic form somewhat dictates the oration of the community’s performative nature, in a way that the grid structure in its current rigid form would fail to facilitate. The UN Habitat proposal, as it stands, gives weight to Professor Nnamdi Elleh’s condemnation of the international architect, who impulsively rearranges “the spaces of modernity into organised visual landscapes which correspond to his/her intellectual schooling […] a process which often dismisses the products of the people who dwell in these neighbourhood” (Elleh, 2011).

Though, as Appenzeller admits, the UN habitat proposal is incomplete with unresolved areas, this current iteration fails to contort itself appropriately as it meets the existing settlement towns of Ningo Prampram; it fails to contour around buildings and spaces that have layered meanings and significance attached to them and fails to facilitate a meandering movement in the city.

It therefore fails to acknowledge in parts that “people live here” (Uwemedimo, 2019). In failing to prioritise the mediation of these parts of the plan, the UN Habitat proposal creates opportunities of social exclusion where the existing inhabitants are isolated, in an unambiguous way, from the emerging city that is being implemented around its edges.

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Figure 14: UN Habitat Masterplan Proposal (UN Habitat, 2016) showing where the grid meets the exisiting towns. Existing roads are abruptly cut off where they meet the new grid

In Ningo Prampram, as in much of Ghana’s urban regions, “the language of everyday life” (Elleh, 2011, p. 67) often articulates

itself through the architectures and built production of the urban poor or underprivileged inhabitants (Elleh, 2011). An example of such a production type is that of the kiosk. The kiosk is a clear, identifiable semiotic marker of Ghanaian urban life, belonging to the cité (Sennett, 2018) at which many regular and even mundane rituals of daily Ghanaian life occur. It conveys messages of opportunity and commerce and embodies the fading history of an informal social network.

Figure 15: Kiosk in Tema marked for removal by the TDC. Photo by Author

Figure 16: Kiosk in Ningo Prampram. Photo by Author

To Ghanaian architect DK Osseo-Asare, the kiosk is an emblematic part of a “flexible urban ecology” signifying “local self-reliance”, and a tool that could be exploited for a more appropriate urban growth model for developing African cities (Osseo-Asare, 2015) a system of nodes and micro-networks that can grow; be scaled up and so forth. However, to many city planners, kioks represent an unwanted urban disobedience. In the neighbouring city, Tema, many are marked for removal by the Tema Development Corporation as officials, planners and designers denigrate them to the status of an eyesore with little respect to the influence they have on the identity of Ghanaian urban spaces. Osseo-Asare implores that the real challenge for future African cities is less about “how to create a city of ‘clean lines’ with no poor people working in the streets, and more one of how to amplify existing ways of living and working in the city” (Osseo-Asare, 2015).

The UN Habitat grid, at surface inspection aligns with the idea of the city of clean lines by over rationalising the city but Appenzeller of MLA+ argues that the grid is flexible and not set

Figure 17: Life by the Kiosk in Tema. Photo by Author

Figure 18: A case for flexible urban ecology (Osseo-Asare, 2015)

in stone. As he reads and understands Ghanaian urbanism, he notes that it has the character of “negotiation” and contends that he does not expect the designed proposal to be implemented exactly as prescribed. It can be argued that the designers of the masterplan consciously understood the nature of “urban disobedience” that persists in Ghana’s urban spaces and therefore provides a rationalised palimpsest that can be overwritten and bent to the city-users will.

This remains merely an implicit hope that is not an overt design decision. One questions whether the Ningo Prampram planning officials will similarly enforce this position or whether in the same respect as the TDC, they will condemn urban disobedience. This however, can only be determined once implemented and tested on the ground – at which point it will be discovered whether this strategy is legible enough to truly facilitate and give autonomy to the city-users ability to exert their applied cultural narratives in the designed space.

Figure 19: Urbanism of negoiation (UN Habitat, 2016)

Conclusion

How then should a legible urban strategy for the expanding city of Ningo Prampram credibly be reached? Firstly, it requires a determined study of the distinct characteristics that already exist in Ningo Prampram, of which this essay has shed some light on. It then relies on the designers, planners and co-creators of the urban space to propose strategies that are explicit in their understanding of the cultural context and truly take an opinion on the use of space that can best serve the city user.

Figure 20: Daily Life in Ningo Prampram. Photo Credit: INTI International New Town Institute

This type of production is instinctive to the existing inhabitants who are non-technical producers of urban space, but requires technical professionals to closely value “context-specific considerations” (d’Auria, 2010) in order to design in a way that enriches the sense of place. Certain aspects of the UN Habitat plan, unfortunately, show an incomplete grasp of Ningo Prampram’s distinct identity and cultural narrative. It may only be with the testing and implementation of this strategy, that we can determine whether the missed opportunities of the proposal, instigates social exclusion from the new city or whether the inhabitants can truly manoeuvre the built environment to their will and layer new narratives upon.

Photo Credits: Figure 3: See Citation Figure 4: Laryea, I. (2018, April 12). At Prampram right now to film Ghana’s oldest Police Station, built by the Danes in 1814. Ningo Prampram, Ghana: @TheIsraelLaryea. Retrieved December 14, 2019, from https://twitter.com/theisraellaryea/status/984410742010077184?lang=en Figure 5: Photo credit unknown Figure 6: Photo Credit: Owula Kpakpo. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International. 2016 Figure 7: PrampramToday. (2019, October 08). Prampram we dey!! Ningo Prampram, Ghana: www. facebook.com/prampramtoday/. Retrieved October 10, 2019, from https://www.facebook.com/ prampramtoday/photos/a.299672753898413/608070669725285/?type=3&theater Figure 8: Annan, N., & Akrong, A. D. (2019, September 15). Prampram Homowo 2019. Ningo Prampram, Ghana: Abongobi Media. Retrieved October 03, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=oYpybdR0LLY Figure 9: Photo Credit: V - Entertainment Consult Figure 10: Blema TV(2019, June 1). Prampram Kpledomi Festival Celebration Ningo Prampram, Ghana: Blema TV. Retrieved October 03, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=yA8IzWQ8WCw&t=347s Figure 12: See Citation. Retrived from: https://www.mlaplus.com/portfolio/en-22-2-55/ Figure 13: See Citation (UN Habitat, 2016, pg 92-93) Figure 14: See Citation (UN Habitat, 2016, pg 84)

Figure 18: See Citation (Osseo-Asare, 2015) Figure 19:See Citation (UN Habitat, 2016, pg 24) Figure 20: Sourced from http://www.newtowninstitute.org/spip.php?article1146

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