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All Roads Lead to Labadi: Civic Negotiations, Infrastructure, and Repair at the International Trade Fair, Accra

Part 2 Project 2023
Samuel Bager
Blake Kem
Columbia University | USA
In Accra, one of the greatest modern urban struggles is the pervasive fight for space between a now formalized, post-colonial governmental body and its pre-colonial, native populations. Much of this land has been expropriated from the Labadi agricultural hinterlands, greatly compromising the livelihood of the ancient Ga peoples at the expense of major nation-building projects, like the International Trade Fair (ITF). Constructed between 1962 and 1967, the ITF has been continuously demolished, reinvented and appropriated. Today, its remaining three pavilions and vast site boundary have been left to disrepair from the uncertainties of the global pandemic, unrealized development plans, and pillaging by locals. This new site strategy proposes a slow, meticulous, and calculated re-development project aimed at negotiating civic space and existing infrastructure. By rerouting the highway which once divided Labadi from its agricultural land, we critique the masterplanning project. By extending Labadi’s density across this threshold, we question what it means to be a ‘slum.’ By stitching urban voids back together and dedicate 50% of the land to agriculture, we restore a community’s right to its land. By re-purposing the remnants of the ITF as a campus of schools, we seek to address a struggling national and local education system.


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2023
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