ABSTRACT
This chapter compares initial proposals for the main mall and neighbourhood commerce with the re-centring of Tema by its everyday users. Doxiadis associates (DA), authors of a first plan for Tema’s Town Centre while they acted as consultants for the entire master plan, followed the credo of the day: separating vehicles from pedestrians, overbridges signalled the importance of the central mall developed around a sequence of differentiated car-free squares. Tema’s ‘downtown’ is bound to strike anyone visiting Ghana’s best-known expression of welfare urbanism. The commissions for Tema’s master plan and town centre development coincided with DA’s elaboration of the concept of ‘growing centre’. The actual design of Tema’s neighbourhoods is significantly close to the plans composed by DA; the same cannot be said for the main town centre, which is manifestly incomplete. DA’s intention to complement its role with other commercial spaces distributed evenly across the town has not materialized.
