Translating Globalised Ideals into Local Settings: The Actors and Complexities of Post-settlement Water Infrastructure Planning in Urban Ghana

Abstract

Following the principles of the networked city and urban planning, pro-active planning of water infrastructure is pertinent for attaining universal water access. Ironically, in cities of the Global South, water infrastructure provision takes the form of post-settlement networks—where human settlements evolve to steer the provision of the large-scale water network. However, little is known about the complexities, the processes and motives, the actors involved and how they navigate towards universalising water access. I investigate this kind of infrastructure planning ideal, drawing inspiration from technological translations from the Global North to the Global South, using the case of Wa, a secondary city of Ghana. The study revealed that off-grid water systems initially served water in secondary cities. The large-scale water network later evolved as a “reactive measure” driven by the rise in population, and the failure of the off-grid water infrastructure to attain universal water access. Despite that, resistance from residents, spatial disorder and sprawling growth, utility policies and in capabilities challenged the efforts of the state utility towards attaining a universal water supply. Through creativity, the utility providers negotiated and invented multiple models of water supply contradictory to the “mono-modal” principles of the networked city. This produced and segregated water access across the urban zones of the city. The findings suggest that though the post-settlement water network provision represents an attempted translation of the networked city ideal, in practice, it does not conform with the hegemonic premise of a networked city to foster universal water supply in the cities of the Global South.