Speaker
Description
Colonisation, globalisation, and rapid urban transitions have significantly altered the built environment of indigenous communities, often eroding their cultural identities and sustainability. While the environmental, economic, and social pillars of sustainability are well recognised, culture as a dimension of sustainability remains underexplored and largely neglected in development discourses. This research examines how acculturation influences the architecture and spatial organisation of indigenous communities, and it seeks to develop a culturally adaptive framework for sustainable development. Adopting a pragmatic paradigm and a qualitatively dominant mixed-method design, the study employs comparative case studies across six culturally distinct communities: Navarongo, Yendi, Larabanga, Kumasi, Jamestown, and Anloga, capturing Ghana’s ethnic diversity and varied architectural traditions. The data collection integrates residents, local artisans, architects, planners, and policy institutions to investigate behavioural antecedents and observations of cultural symbolism, materials, methods, and styles of construction, as well as indigenous planning and architectural logic (African “feng shui” and fractals) embedded in settlement morphology. The findings are expected to generate a context specific model for culturally sustainable architecture and planning in Ghana, with broader applicability to sub-Saharan Africa. By bridging indigenous traditions and modern sustainability imperatives, the study contributes to academic discourse, policy design and practical urban planning and architecture. Ultimately, it provided empirical evidence for embedding culture in the sustainability agenda, ensuring that spatial development pathways remain locally resonant, resilient, and inclusive.
Keywords: Sustainability, Globalisation, Culture, Built Environment, Acculturation, and Indigenous Communities.