Ghana’s Two Millennium Cities Benefit from MCI Partnerships Focused on Urban Design and Planning

MCI – UDL Collaboration Expands to Kumasi

MCI’s collaboration with the Urban Design Lab has now entered its second year with 30 UDL architects/designers from all over the world visiting Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city, in early February, to explore how best to upgrade and revive a severely deteriorated and impoverished neighborhood and to design a new Women’s and Girls’ Resource Center close to the economic heart of the city. The Urban Design team and MCI collaborated with their architecture and planning counterparts at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Ghana’s premiere institution in these fields.

The KNUST students shared the fruits of their previous semester’s extensive mapping and demographic research on this site, and after several long days’ intensive site visits and consultations with local officials and residents, Earth Institute and KNUST students presented their ideas to the Mayor of Kumasi, key government officials and other local and international stakeholders, whose feedback was extremely positive and constructive. The two teams are continuing to collaborate long distance, with more profound and detailed designs and development studies to be presented for midterm and final reviews over the next two months. The need for and excitement regarding the planned Women’s and Girls’ Center was palpable in all of the focus groups conducted by MCI, at schools, in our Girls’ Clubs, with women’s business associations, in the market and in informal interviews.

Major International Architecture & Planning Firm Works Pro Bono to Upgrade Accra’s Historic Ga Mashie Neighborhood

In early February MCI brought to Accra a small team of architects and planners from Kohn Pederson Fox Associates PC, a leading New York-based architecture and planninMCI – UDL Collaboration Expands to Kumasi

MCI’s collaboration with the Urban Design Lab has now entered its second year with 30 UDL architects/designers from all over the world visiting Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city, in early February, to explore how best to upgrade and revive a severely deteriorated and impoverished neighborhood and to design a new Women’s and Girls’ Resource Center close to the economic heart of the city. The Urban Design team and MCI collaborated with their architecture and planning counterparts at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Ghana’s premiere institution in these fields.

The KNUST students shared the fruits of their previous semester’s extensive mapping and demographic research on this site, and after several long days’ intensive site visits and consultations with local officials and residents, Earth Institute and KNUST students presented their ideas to the Mayor of Kumasi, key government officials and other local and international stakeholders, whose feedback was extremely positive and constructive. The two teams are continuing to collaborate long distance, with more profound and detailed designs and development studies to be presented for midterm and final reviews over the next two months. The need for and excitement regarding the planned Women’s and Girls’ Center was palpable in all of the focus groups conducted by MCI, at schools, in our Girls’ Clubs, with women’s business associations, in the market and in informal interviews.

Major International Architecture & Planning Firm Works Pro Bono to Upgrade Accra’s Historic Ga Mashie Neighborhood

In early February MCI brought to Accra a small team of architects and planners from Kohn Pederson Fox Associates PC, a leading New York-based architecture and planning firm. KPF is contributing its services to continue the work of the UDL by designing further housing prototypes and conducting some integrated planning for the heart of historic Accra, the waterfront community of Ga Mashie, one of the areas of focus of the Implementation Toolkit, where MCI and UDL have been working so intensively for over a year.

MCI and the KPF team toured the community and conferred with local residents, officials, developers, planners and architects to understand both the historical context and the planning and spatial needs and aspirations for this important community. MCI, KPF, these Accra-based specialists and the governing Accra Metropolitan Assembly will continue to work together over the months to come, to design and build some of the proposed solutions, thereby enabling this historic site, its desirable location and its capable residents to begin to attract the investment and attention they deserve.g firm. KPF is contributing its services to continue the work of the UDL by designing further housing prototypes and conducting some integrated planning for the heart of historic Accra, the waterfront community of Ga Mashie, one of the areas of focus of the Implementation Toolkit, where MCI and UDL have been working so intensively for over a year.

MCI and the KPF team toured the community and conferred with local residents, officials, developers, planners and architects to understand both the historical context and the planning and spatial needs and aspirations for this important community. MCI, KPF, these Accra-based specialists and the governing Accra Metropolitan Assembly will continue to work together over the months to come, to design and build some of the proposed solutions, thereby enabling this historic site, its desirable location and its capable residents to begin to attract the investment and attention they deserve.