Introduction

I grew up in Accra, the capital city of Ghana. Over the years, i have become more and more passionate about cities. It started with my fascination with buildings and architecture which gradually led to me studying architecture in the university. While studying architecture, it became clearer and clearer over the years that, the urban environment in which buildings exist have a very big role to play in how buildings function and how people interact with them. This realization has led to my keen interest in urban planning and design which are in my opinion, even more important than architecture. I believe that once we have got our urban environments working properly, architecture will naturally follow suite. This belief was instigated through my first visit to London where i realized that London was not a great city because of the old traditional buildings that it is mostly made of, which were obviously not always built with the best of architectural principles, but that it was a great city because of how much attention that has been paid in the design of the public realm. The parks, the streets, the transportation systems, the public squares, the shopping centers and so on. So now, I am a student of urban design, with aspirations towards being able to help reshape our cities into more sustainable cities which provide the basic needs for the entire spectrum of their inhabitants and this blog is only the beginning of my contribution towards this cause. My name is Hassan Salih and I am a Ghanaian Urbanist.

Disclaimer
I do not in anyway claim to be a qualified urban designer and that my ideas are the best. This blog is only a platform to express my personal opinions about urban issues in Ghana. The solutions I propose on this blog are my ideas based on common sense, sometimes novel, sometimes borrowed from other sources in which case I shall always provide the necessary references and links. Please feel free to post comments, criticize me if you disagree with me, but please be civil about it when you do. Thanks.