Repurposed lives: shipping containers as contested sites of urban citizenship in Accra
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/bgss-2026-0032Keywords
geography, planning & development, Accra, African cities, container urbanism, urban informality, sociospatial, sustainable housingAbstract
This study investigates how shipping containers are repurposed as architecture in Accra, Ghana. The study reveals the spatial factors shaping the emergence of these adaptive structures. Rather than being randomly situated, containers cluster in strategic locations enabling access to livelihoods while also avoiding eviction threats. Their positioning highlights contradictions between top-down urban planning favouring elite interests and the needs of marginalised residents. The repurposing of containers represents creative grassroots placemaking, transforming discarded industrial artefacts into vital communal infrastructure. However, their proliferation also stems from state-led displacements and lack of affordable housing, reflecting broader exploitation of the urban poor. As such, container structures constitute spatial innovations that represent attempts to resolve the failures of neoliberal urban governance. But they equally crystallise emerging inequalities and conflicts over the right to the city. ...
References
Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA). (2019). Speeding; Leading Cause of Road Crashes in Accra- 2nd AMA Road Safety Report. Accra: Accra Metropolitan Assembly, October 2019.
Al Sholi, H. Y., Wakjira, T., Kutty, A. A., Habib, S., Alfadhli, M., Aejas, B., Kucukvar, M., Onat, N.C., & Kim, D. (2023). How circular economy can reduce scope 3 carbon footprints: Lessons learned from FIFA world cup Qatar 2022. Circular Economy, 2(1), 100026. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cec.2023.100026
Aliu, I.R. (2022). Sustainable housing development dynamics in the Global South: reflections on theories, strategies and constraints. Bulletin of Geography. Socio-Economic Series, (56), 83–100. https://doi.org/10.12775/bgss-2022-0014
Andres, L., Bryson, J.R., & Moawad, P. (2021). Temporary urbanisms as policy alternatives to enhance health and well-being in the post-pandemic city. Current Environmental Health Reports, 8: 167-176. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40572-021-00314-8
Appeaning Addo, K. (2016). Drone Footage of Community Flooding and Coastal Erosion in the Volta Delta. The DECCMA project. http://www.deccma.com/deccma/projects_database/features/?action=story&id=82
Appeaning Addo, K., Jayson-Quashigah, P.-N., Codjoe, S.N.A. & Martey, F. (2018). Drone as a Tool for Coastal Flood Monitoring in the Volta Delta, Ghana. Geoenvironmental Disasters, 5(1): 17.
Ardayfio-Schandorf, E., Yankson, P.W., & Bertrand, M. (2012). The mobile city of Accra. African Books Collective.
Awiah, M.D. (2018). Mobile money operator, 39, killed by armed robbers. Graphic Online. Available at https://www.graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/mobile-money-operator-39-killed-by-armed-robbers.html
Bernardo, L. F., Oliveira, L.A., Nepomuceno, M.C., & Andrade, J.M. (2013). Use of refurbished shipping containers for the construction of housing buildings: details for the structural project. Journal of Civil Engineering and Management, 19(5): 628-646.
https://doi.org/10.3846/13923730.2013.795185
Borden, I., Rendell, J., Kerr, J. & Pivaro, A. (2000). Things, Flows, Filters, Tactics. In I. Borden, J. Rendell, J. Kerr and A. Pivaro, (eds.), The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space. MIT Press.
Boyle, M.S. (2016). Container aesthetics: The infrastructural politics of shunt's The Boy Who Climbed Out of His Face. Theatre Journal, 68(1): 57-77.
Cities Alliance (2016). Future-Proofing Cities: Metropolitan Cities in Ghana. https://www.arup.com/perspectives/publications/research/section/future-cities-africa.
D’Oleire-Oltmanns, S., Marzolff, I., Peter, K. & Ries J.B. (2012). Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) for Monitoring Soil Erosion in Morocco. Remote Sensing, 4: 3390–3416, https://doi.org/10.3390/rs4113390
Danso, J. (2022). Four robbers jailed 80 years for robbing Mobile Money Vendor at gunpoint. Pokuase: Ghana News Agency. Available at: https://gna.org.gh/2022/08/four-robbers-jailed-80-years-for-robbing-mobile-money-vendor-at-gunpoint/
Dietz, S., & Nadarajan, G. (2006). Container Culture. Leonardo, 39(4): 290-303. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/leon.2006.39.4.290
Doe, B., Amoako, C., & Adamtey, R. (2022). Spatial expansion and patterns of land use/land cover changes around Accra, Ghana–Emerging insights from Awutu Senya East Municipal Area. Land Use Policy, 112: 105796. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2021.105796
Dziwornu, M.G. (2024a). The ‘Container Menace’: unpacking household perceptions of container urbanism in Ghana. GeoJournal, 89(1): 40. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-024-11048-z
Dziwornu, M.G. (2024b). Global Container Urbanism and Sustainable Urban Development. Home Cultures, 21(1): 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/17406315.2024.2377882
Dziwornu, M.G., & Coletto, D. (2023). A ‘Better Life for All in Bricks and Mortar’: The spatial rationalities of container urbanism in Accra. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 60(3): 1549-1566. https://doi.org/10.1177/00219096231197752
Farley, P., & Roberts, M.S. (2011). Edgelands: Journeys into England’s True Wilderness. London: Jonathan Cape.
Frimpong, E.D. (2021). Ghana’s most populous region: Greater Accra overtakes Ashanti. Graphic Online. Available at: https://www.graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/ghana-s-most-populous-region-greater-accra-overtakes-ashanti.html
Gabe, J., & Williams, P. (1986). Is Space Bad for Your Health? The Relationship Between Crowding in the Home and Emotional Distress in Women. Sociology of Health and Illness, 8(4): 351–371, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.ep11340458
Ghana Statistical Service (GSS). (2013). 2010 Population & Housing Census: National Analytical Report. Ghana Statistics Service.
Ghana Statistical Service (GSS). (2014). 2010 Population & Housing Census: District Analytical Report. Ghana Statistics Service.
Ghana Urbanisation Think Tank (GUTT) (2019). Cities as a Strategic Resource: Guideline for Ghana’s National Urban Policy Revision. London: Paper for the Coalition for Urban Transitions. Available at: https://urbantransitions.global/publications/
Gillespie, T. (2016). From Quiet to Bold Encroachment: Contesting Dispossession in Accra’s Informal Sector. Urban Geography, 38(7): 974–992. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2016.1191792
Giriunas, K., Sezen, H., & Dupaix, R.B. (2012). Evaluation, modeling, and analysis of shipping container building structures. Engineering Structures, 43: 48-57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engstruct.2012.05.001
Gottdiener, M. (1994). The Social Production of Urban Space (Second Edition). Austin: University of Texas Press
Grant, R. (2009). Globalizing City: The Urban and Economic Transformation of Accra, Ghana. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press.
Haque, M.O., Aman, J., & Mohammad, F. (2022). Construction sustainability of container-modular-housing in coastal regions towards resilient community. Built Environment Project and Asset Management, 12(3): 467-485. https://doi.org/10.1108/BEPAM-01-2021-0011
Harvey, D. (1973). Social Justice and the City. London: Edward Arnold.
Harvey, D. (1974). Class-monopoly rent, finance capital and the urban revolution. Regional Studies, 8(3-4): 239-255. https://doi.org/10.2307/142863
Harvey, D. (2005). Spaces of Neoliberalization: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Heynen, N., Kaika, M., & Swyngedouw, E. (Eds.). (2006). In the nature of cities: Urban political ecology and the politics of urban metabolism (Vol. 3). Taylor & Francis.
Islam, H., Zhang, G., Setunge, S., & Bhuiyan, M. A. (2016). Life cycle assessment of shipping container home: A sustainable construction. Energy and Buildings, 128: 673-685. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2016.07.002
Klose, A. (2015). The Container Principle: How a Box Changes the Way We Think. Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England: The MIT Press
Kucukvar, M., Kutty, A.A., Al-Hamrani, A., Kim, D., Nofal, N., Onat, N.C., Ermolaeva, P.,
Al-Ansari, T., Al-Thani, S.K., Al-Jurf, N.M, Bulu, M. & Al-Nahhal, W. (2021). How circular design can contribute to social sustainability and legacy of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™? The case of innovative shipping container stadium. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 91: 106665. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2021.106665
Lefebvre, H. (1991a). Critique of Everyday Life, Volume 1. Translated by J. Moore. London: Verso.
Lefebvre, H. (1991b). The Production of Space. Translated by D. Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lefebvre, H. (2009). State, Space, World: Selected Essays. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Lewandowska, A., & Szymańska, D. (2021). Ecologisation of Polish cities in the light of selected parameters of sustainable development. Sustainable Cities and Society, 64: 102538. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2020.102538
Lindsay, M. (2014). Social Interaction. In: A.C. Michalos, ed., Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Dordrecht: Springer.
Ling, P.C.H., Tan, C. S., & Saggaff, A. (2019). Feasibility of ISO shipping container as transitional shelter-a review. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 620(1): 012056. https://doi.org/10.1088/1757-899X/620/1/012056
Lucieer, A., Jong, S.M. de, & Turner, D. (2014). Mapping Landslide Displacements Using Structure from Motion (SfM) and Image Correlation of Multi-temporal UAV Photography. Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment, 38(1): 97–116. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309133313515293
Marcińczak, S., & Bartosiewicz, B. (2024). The socialist metropolis in flux: Urban structure and commuting patterns in Poland, 1973–1983. Journal of Historical Geography. 83: 37-52, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2023.11.004
Mfamadi, T., Chivimbo, K., Mogadime, P., Bidassey-Manilal, S., Kapwata, T., Naidoo, N., & Wright, C.Y. (2024). Container buildings used for residential and business purposes in Johannesburg, South Africa and potential heat-related health risks. F1000Research, 12: 929.
Ministry of Works & Housing. (2022). Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) 2022–2025: Programme-Based Budget Estimates for the 2022 Financial Year. Accra, Ghana: Government of Ghana, Ministry of Works & Housing.
Obeng-Odoom, F. (2015). The social, spatial, and economic roots of urban inequality in Africa: Contextualizing Jane Jacobs and Henry George. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 74(3): 550-586. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12101
O’Brien, F. (1992). Approximation methods in discrete spatial density analysis for finite populations. Perceptual and motor skills, 74(3): 867-873. https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.1992.74.3.867
Owen, B. (2016). Drones on the Delta: In Ghana’s Volta River Delta, the Remotely Operated Aerial Vehicles are Going Where Researchers can’t to Help Study Coastal Erosion, Flooding and Migration. http://idrc.canadiangeographic.ca/education/docs/ghana-drones-delta-workbook.pdf.
Owusu, G. (2008). Indigenes’ and Migrants’ Access to Land in Peri-urban Areas of Accra, Ghana. International Development Planning Review, 30(2): 177–198. https://doi.org/10.3828/idpr.30.2.5
Owusu, G. (2012). Coping with urban sprawl: a critical discussion of the urban containment strategy in a developing country city, Accra. Planum, 26: 1–17.
Parker, M. (2013). Containerisation: moving things and boxing ideas. Mobilities, 8(3): 368-387. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2012.707892
Parker, R.N., & Asencio, E.K. (2009). GIS and Spatial Analysis for the Social Sciences: Coding, Mapping, and Modeling (1st Edition). New York: Routledge.
Pugliese, J. (2009). Civil modalities of refugee trauma, death and necrological transport. Social Identities, 15(1): 149-165. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630802693687
Quayson, A. (2014). Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press.
Sanjek, R. (1982). The organization of households in Adabraka: Toward a wider comparative perspective. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 24(1): 57-103. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417500009798
Schmid, C. (2008). Henri Lefebvre’s Theory of the Production of Space: Towards a Three-dimensional Dialectic. In: Goonewardena, K., Kipfer, S., Milgrom, R. & Schmid, C. (eds.), Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre. New York: Routledge.
Schmid, C. (2014). The trouble with Henri: Urban research and the theory of the production of space. In: Stanek, Ł., Schmid, C. & Moravánszky A. (eds.), Urban Revolution Now: Henri Lefebvre in Social Research and Architecture. Farnham: Ashgate.
Schmid, C., Stanek, Ł., & Moravánszky, Á. (eds.) (2014). Introduction: Theory, Not Method–Thinking with Lefebvre. In: Urban Revolution Now: Henri Lefebvre in Social Research and Architecture. Farnham: Ashgate.
Schwarzer, M. (2013). The Emergence of Container Urbanism. Places Journal. Available at: https://doi.org/10.22269/130212
Shen, L., & Guo, X. (2014). Spatial Quantification and Pattern Analysis of Urban Sustainability Based on a Subjectively Weighted Indicator Model: A Case Study in the City of Saskatoon, SK, Canada. Applied Geography, 53: 117-127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2014.06.001
Smith, N. (2008). Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space. London: The University of Georgia Press.
Soja, E.W. (1980). The Socio-Spatial Dialectic. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 70(2): 207–225. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.1980.tb01308.x
Sorkin, M. (1996). Container Riff. Some Assembly Required, 185-190. https://www.publicspace.org/multimedia/-/post/container-ri-1
Spanos, I., Kucukvar, M., Bell, T. C., Elnimah, A., Hamdan, H., Al Meer, B., Prakash, S., Lundberg, O, Kutty, A.A., & AlKhereibi, A.H.A. (2022). How FIFA World Cup 2022™ can meet the carbon neutral commitments and the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development?: Reflections from the tree nursery project in Qatar. Sustainable Development, 30(1): 203-226. https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2239
Spio, A.E. (2011). The City Branding of Accra. In: Dinnie, K. (ed.), City Branding. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230294790_12
Stanek, Ł. (2008). Space as Concrete Abstraction: Hegel, Marx and Modern Urbanism in Henri Lefebvre. In: Goonewardena, K., Kipfer, S., Milgrom, R., & Schmid, C. (eds), Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre. New York: Routledge.
Stanek, Ł. (2011). Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research and the Production of Theory. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University Press.
Szirmai, V. (2016). The main characteristics of East-Central European urbanisation processes. In: Szirmai, V. (Ed.), “Artificial towns” in the 21st century: Social polarisation in the new town regions of East-Central Europe. Budapest: Institute for Sociology, Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Taleb, H., Elsebaei, M., & El-Attar, M. (2019). Enhancing the sustainability of shipping container homes in a hot arid region: A case study of Aswan in Egypt. Architectural Engineering and Design Management, 15(6): 459-474. https://doi.org/10.1080/17452007.2019.1628002
Trancossi, M., Cannistraro, G., & Pascoa, J. (2020). Thermoelectric and solar heat pump use toward self sufficient buildings: The case of a container house. Thermal Science and Engineering Progress, 18: 100509. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsep.2020.100509
UN-Habitat (2006). The state of the world cities report 2006/2007. Nairobi, Kenya: UN-Habitat.
UN-Habitat (2016) World cities report 2016: Urbanization and development – emerging futures, Nairobi, Kenya: UN-Habitat.
UN-Habitat (2023). SDG 11 Synthesis Report 2023: Transformative Shifts for a Better Urban Future. Nairobi, Kenya: United Nations Human Settlements Programme.
Velez, M.B. (2001). The role of public social control in urban neighborhoods: A multilevel analysis of victimization risk. Criminology, 39(4): 837-864. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2001.tb00942.x
Vijayalaxmi, J. (2010). Towards sustainable architecture – a case with Greentainer.
Local Environment, 15(3): 245-259.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13549830903575596
Węcławowicz, G. (2002). New dimensions of the socio-spatial differentiation in Polish towns. Europa XXI, 7: 99–105. https://rcin.org.pl/Content/3101/WA51_13324_r2002-t7_EuropaXXI.pdf
Węcławowicz, G. (2016). Urban development in Poland: From the socialist city to the post-socialist and neoliberal city. In: Szirmai, V. (Ed.): “Artificial towns” in the 21st century: Social polarisation in the new town regions of East-Central Europe. Budapest: Institute for Sociology, Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
World Bank (2016). World Development Indicators. http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=world-development-indicators#.
World Bank (2017). 2014 Land Cover Classification of Accra, Ghana. https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/dataset/c-2014-land-cover-classification-accra-ghana.
Yamada, T. (2017). Dynamics of spatial inequality and poverty: Evidence from two decades of surveys in Vietnam, 1993-2014. Economics Bulletin, 38(1): 404-418. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3818592
Yin, R.K. (2003). Case Study Research: Design and Methods (3rd edition). Los Angeles:Sage Publications.
Zieleniec, A. (2018). Lefebvre’s Politics of Space: Planning the Urban as Oeuvre. Urban Planning, 3(3): 5-15. https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v3i3.1343
Zha, X., & Zuo, Y. (2016). Theoretical and experimental studies on in-plane stiffness of integrated container structure. Advances in Mechanical Engineering, 8(3): 1687814016637522. https://doi.org/10.1177/1687814016637522
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Michael Gameli Dziwornu, Tomasz Rachwał
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Title, logo and layout of journal Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series are reserved trademarks of Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series.Stats
Number of views and downloads: 19
Number of citations: 0
