# MARKET /// Listening There: Scenes from Ghana

Listening There: Scenes from Ghana is a video compilation from the travel research of Mabel O. Wilson & Peter Tolkin. The video explores Kejetia Central Market, Kumasi and former American Embassy, Accra. In this cross comparison, we see that the rich and poor of Ghana have continued to occupy separate worlds — worlds nonetheless interdependent. Ghana’s modernist architectural icons now sit within fields of hermetically sealed air-conditioned towers skinned in purple, blue and gray reflective glass. These generic buildings house the finance institutions and hotels, the communication, energy and trading companies that tether Ghana to the global economy. They accommodate the organizational conduits that connect to China, India, the Americas and elsewhere, and that channel the goods that flood the streets and fill the markets of regional centers like Kumasi.

At every corner, cities are peppered with cellular communication networks and with brightly colored kiosks vending phone cards. And in between the commercial and governmental districts, like an unstoppable flow, seep the metal-roofed slums housing the millions who’ve journeyed from country to city seeking work. Roadways are jammed with people moving from home to work and back again

Source: Listening There

# AFRICAN CITY /// Transport Based Urbanism

transport-based-urbansim

Nigeria is the country with the highest population on the African continent—the 7th largest in the world.  Its most largely populated city, Lagos, has been at the center of conversation on the future of the African City.  Lagos has a rapidly growing population of over 18 million people and is projected to be the 3rd largest city in world in just a few short years.  As we investigate the African city, we must take cues from this leading city of booming economic growth and development while also remembering to maintain a critical lens.

The city of Lagos is mapped by its infrastructure—namely its bus stops which take place at its interchanges.  BAK refers to this advantageous usage of the street as Transport Based Urbanism.  As we take a look at Nigeria from the scale of the country down to the scale of the interchange, let us allow its case study conditions to inform our thoughts On The African City.