TOWN CENTER CONCEPT

The neighborhood concept for the neighborhood of Alajo is based on the historic English
idea of the village common or Village Green. The village common provided a central
location where meetings and congregations could take place and was a public space
open to all. This area was land, usually in private ownership, over which the community
had “rights of common.” This land was generally open, unfenced and remote,
particularly in the upland areas of England and Wales.

In the Spanish colonial architectural tradition, a town plaza, centrally located and in
sight of the church provided the same communal and social function. In traditional
African societies, residential areas are divided into extended family compounds with
common cooking areas. These examples provides ample evidence for the town center
concept as a precedent for community organization.

The town center is conceptualized for Alajo as the multi-purpose nucleus of social and
civic activity. A Common is to be created on prime space near the center of the village
on the highest ground well out of the floodplain. This location is highly visible, safe and
is a natural choice for an evacuation or gathering site in case of emergency.

The Common creates a social space for recreation and interaction and also provides a
central area for the location of civic services that directly promote the development,
health and well being of the residents of Alajo.

This concept, while emphasizing relocation of dwellings within the floodplain, is gradual
and based on a long-term plan of 30 years. It is minimally incursive, focuses on local
transport and respects the natural and established existing patterns of physical and
social growth. The plan also respects cultural preferences like the extended family
model and the high-density housing. This plan creates an locally-oriented, self-reliant
environment and approach to daily life. It encourages Alajo collectively, and the
villagers individually, to use tools and agencies within ready reach at the Common to
make themselves more self-sufficient both politically and economically. It is envisaged

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that this 30-year plan will be financed with a combination of national economic
programs by the Ghana government with external partners and financing agencies.

The Common
The Common, at the intersection of Maamobi High Road and Alajo Road, will have an
area of approximately 75 m2. The Common is a green space with pedestrian footpaths,
trees and street furniture. An area is set aside on the larger parcel for agricultural
purposes. (Another large park/evacuation space will be constructed in the northeastern
part of the neighborhood.)

The Common will be anchored by the Community Resource Center, a roster of agencies
along its perimeter. Proposed facilities include a public primary care clinic is proposed
(currently, just two private clinics operate in Alajo), fire station, banking cooperative for
micro-credit geared to housing financing, and finally, and employment office with
vocational training center. The Common also hosts social clubs including those
interested in cards, weaving, and the popular game of oware. A meeting hall, a
permanent green and goods market and a childcare cooperative are also proposed. All
these agencies will provide direct assistance to Alajo residents and also offer
employment.

Residential Areas
This proposal makes a significant, long-term investment in expensive infrastructure to
relocate residents from the floodplain to safe, desirable dwellings with potable piped
water to individual homes and a piped sewerage system. This plan is envisioned as
long-term housing and not a short-term temporary solution. Alajo is a mere 6 km
outside of the well-developed central and could thus be poised to be a very desirable
residential neighborhood over the next 50 years.

To immediately ease the human congestion and create some space, young people of
working age with education and prospects of employment in the industrial sector will be
offered incentives to relocate to high-density, apartment-style housing in the new Tema
developments.

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The initial movement within Alajo will be relocation of households living within the 25-
year floodplain to gradually fill-in space in extant development at the northernmost
boundary of the neighborhood where the development consists of lower-middle income,
large, one-story houses. The town center plan incorporates a proposal to relocate
floodplain residents to new rowhouses through microfinancing that would create denser,
mixed-income neighborhoods at the center of the neighborhood.

This housing plan is dense and necessarily compact as the 25-year floodplain becomes a
designated no-build zone. A typical block in Alajo will be approximately 100 m by 60 m.
A density of 96 people per hectare is anticipated.

This plan proposes three-story rowhouses oriented with the long side to the street,
maximizing cross-ventilation, as houses will not be air-conditioned. These houses will be
owned jointly by up to eight members of an extended family. The smallest parcels, lots
of 16.5 m by 10 m, will include small semi-private back yards, which could be developed
as vegetable gardens, and alleyways which provide access to emergency vehicles -
particularly fire trucks - and garbage collection trucks.

Transportation
The town center concept emphasizes management of pedestrian traffic. Alajo is too
densely populated to add any major infrastructure for vehicular traffic. In the town
center concept, automobile traffic through the neighborhood is permitted but is made
inconvenient by the narrowness of streets and the bans on cars during rush. This
encourages transportation alternatives such as buses and bicycles.

Two major bus routes are proposed; they will travel in bus lanes each which also
provide bike paths and pedestrian lanes. The first north-south artery will be along Alajo
Road and the east-west along Maamobi High Street. Also, a new car/pedestrian bridge
at the Alajo/Nsawam Road intersection is proposed. Streets will easily accommodate the
traffic of tro-tros, trucks making local deliveries and picking up garbage, and emergency
vehicles. In addition to the center as an evacuation site, this will create new evacuation
routes to the north.

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Industrial Areas
Manufacturing
Light industry will be dispersed throughout the neighborhood in clusters. The focus is
on small clean manufacturing and cottage industry and technology clusters, and possibly
a plant for the drying and canning of fruit that can be trucked and then shipped from
Tema.

Information Technology
Offshore data processing and customer service for European and American corporations
and their backoffice operations is an option for Alajo’s economy. Ghana might even
offer these services for companies in more thriving African economies, such as South
Africa. Kiosks for fax, phone, and Internet services dot Alajo, showing an embrace of
technology that could support a franchise of Internet cafes with meeting centers.
Investing in and establishing information and communication technology (ICT)
infrastructure will make Alajo a desirable location for small businesses.

Free Trade Zones

These enterprises might operate in a free trade zone, making Alajo a more desirable
location than its neighbors. Such a proposal would need careful government
management to ensure corporate commitment long enough to impart transferable skills
and leave behind an industrial infrastructure that can continue to benefit the residents.

Risk Management and Environmental Sustainability

Moving the entire population of Alajo is unlikely to be feasible for political, financial, and
social reasons, and so flooding must be addressed locally and at the regional level
through engineering and remediation measures. This plan proposes a multi-faceted
solution that should be implemented in its entirety.

Flood Management
Population living on the banks of the Odaw and tributaries should be moved to higher
grounds. The resulting open space should be reserved as park or urban farmland that

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can safely flood without significant human or material losses. This open space therefore
serves as a buffer between the people and the river, allowing the river to overflow its
banks periodically (as happens naturally).

The design capacity of the Odaw River and its tributaries should be for the 100-year
flood instead of the current 25 or 50-year design. This would limit the number of
flooding events in the floodplain, and leave residents vulnerable only to extreme flooding
events.

The option of last resort is to design sediment traps along the channel to prevent silting
by sediment and rubbish. This option is least desirable because it treats the symptoms
of the problem rather than its cause. However, sediment traps are an important part of
any engineered drainage network and can be designed to serve as retention basins
delaying flow upstream. This delay leads to a limitation of the height of the flood wave
by spreading an equal amount of water over time, thereby reducing the flood hazard.

Reforestation
Excessive urbanization reduces the time it takes for a flood wave to form and thus
increases its height. As part of any flood mitigation strategy, restoring the catchment’s
natural land cover offers crucial reduction of flooding hazard. Reserving open space and
reforesting it are effective at mitigating floods at a regional level.

Clearly, this strategy can achieve the most effective results when done in a concerted
and integrated manner at the city and regional level. Alajo residents and their
representatives must coordinate with their counterparts in the Accra Municipal Assembly
to devise a practical, economically sound, and environmentally rational strategy for
reforestation.

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Disasters
The plan proposes universal potable water through individual house hook-ups, routinized
garbage collection and piped sewerage to safeguard public health and reduce the
vulnerability of Alajo residents to diseases and epidemics. This plan proposes to reduce
susceptibility to fire with good water access, fire-resistant building codes in new
buildings and a lookout tower at the firehouse. All new construction will be built to
comply with seismic codes codes. The Common is on the highest point of the area, well
out of the floodplain and can serve as an excellent evacuation site.

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