WHERE DO you live? Was your rent dependent on the planned or unplanned nature of the community? Does your community have a plan that maps out clearly areas for community facilities like parks, schools, markets and refuse dumping grounds? Have you ever taken the trouble to find out if your community has a plan and whether the plan is being implemented? Would you help your District Assembly to implement your area plan if you knew what the plan was?

These questions are intended to help us all think of a very important component of our daily lives; spatial planning and management and its benefits to the individual, the community and the nation. A well-planned community attracts good investments, caters for the needs of its members and is a legacy for generations yet unborn.

The Tema Township, SSNIT developed residential areas around the country, Sodom and Gomorrah, Ashaiman, Nima 441 are some examples of good and bad spatial planning and management.

What is the point?

Effective land use planning and management is an essential component of land administration and therefore crucial for the attainment of the overall objective of the land administration system in the country. Indeed it is central to a sustainable, fair and transparent land registration and development management system.

Yet the availability of area plans is useless unless it is enforced and adhered to. Past experience has shown that the Assemblies alone have been unable to enforce plans. The new approach now is to involve stakeholders in the community to develop the plans and monitor its implementation and enforcement.

The recent floods and loss of lives, and the very recent actions of the Ga West District Assembly lately are some examples of the effects of an ineffective land use planning and infrastructure provision system in the country. These perhaps could have been prevented if there had been in place an efficient land use planning and management system, designed and enforced by both the community and the Planning Departments of the various assemblies.

Such a system allows for the planning or urban and peri-urban communities by all stakeholders: Assembly, residents, private sector, etc. and operates on the assumption that, if people assist to plan their communities, they will enforce the plan thereby ensuring a well-structured spatial development.

In an attempt to institute such a system for land use planning and management, the Town and Country Planning Department (TCPD) has benefited from a project under the Land Administration System. The project is the Land Use Planning and Management Project (LUPMP), under the Land Administration Project (LAP).

LUPMP

At the presentation of the project's inception report to the Land Administration and Planning Unit (LAPU) and other Land Sector Agencies on July 3rd 2007, the Project Manager, Alistair Blunt, said the goal is to develop a coherent, streamlined and sustainable land use planning and management system which is decentralized, and based on consultative and participatory approaches to effectively manage human settlements developments.

The Land Use Planning and Management Project (LUPMP), is an attempt to introduce a new approach to land use planning, implementation and monitoring that is all inclusive and allows for communities to be empowered through information to know and enforce the right use of land in their communities.

The project will develop orthophoto maps for planning and empower 13 pilot communities nationwide to plan and enforce land use planning systems. Key activities under the project include:

1. Developing and testing decentralized Land Use Planning models in 13 urban and peri-urban communities; 2. Preparation of a National Human Settlements Policy, and reform of legal and institutional frameworks for land use planning; 3. Developing and implementing an Information Systems (IS) for Land Use Planning and Management (LUPM) as part of the National Land Information System (NLIS); and 4. Implementation of Land Use Plans at regional, district and local levels including Greater Accra Region.

The project will be carried out in three phases. The pilot phase of the project will develop and test models and processes of land use planning, development controls in partnership and with active participation of the communities and customary landowners. Three communities have been identified for the pilot phase namely Asankragua in the Western region, Ejisu in Ashanti region, and Kasoa in the Central region.

In these pilot communities LUPMP will focus on institutional strengthening of the Town and Country Planning Department with its local offices. A large training programme will be designed and implemented to build sufficient capacity at central, regional and districts level.

The outputs of these activities are intended to improve the capacity of the Town and Country Planning Department, involve communities in planning and implementation of community plans, as well as culminates in the success of the parent project, the Land Administration project.

TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING DEPT

A 2003 Appraisal of the Town and Country Planning Department concluded that the Department was performing below expectation mainly due to its weak and obsolete legal and institutional structures, poor human resource and logistical capacity, poor working conditions, and low staff morale. Additionally, TCPD was found to be using technologies and operating procedures and methods that retard the rate of service delivery.

The establishment of a Geological Information System (GIS) with a database of land information under the project is aimed at improving the technological capacity of the Department and its staff.

"The expectation is that at the end of the project, the TCPD will be empowered to develop marketable products and services that will make it self financing and self sustaining. This is why the project has a mandate to establish in all regional offices of the Department an information system that will facilitate the work of the Department.

Additionally, it is expected that because the community was involved in the formulation of the community plans, they will help to enforce the plans," says Mr. Ben Doe, the Deputy Project Manager.

The Land Use Planning and Management Technical Assistance project is a sub component (3.4) of the Land Administration Project (LAP) in the Ministry of Lands, Forestry and Mines (MLFM) aimed at assisting establish an efficient and effective management of development in Ghana, through assistance to the Town and Country Planning Department (TCPD), under the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and the Environment (MLGRDE).

The LUPM Project is funded by the Nordic Development Fund (NDF, loan 413) and runs from 2007 to 2010. Thereafter, the project will be mainstreamed into the operations of the TCPD.