Paper short abstract:

This paper traces the negotiations over access to maps and knowledge, and the practical work of re-mapping the sewerage system in Tema, Ghana through manual interventions in clocked sewerage manholes, to understand the complex interconnection between infrastructure, urban change and politics.

Paper long abstract:

Mapping is an important tool for urban governance. It entails power. So does the control of access to historical and contemporary maps. Quayson (2014) describes how a researcher in quest for maps of Accra is send from one institution to the next until she returns in vain to her starting point. The lack of access to quality information on the city has leads the researchers to increase their focus on ethnographic sources that induce lived experiences onto the city. However, not only researchers lack proper access to maps of cities, in the port city of Tema, municipal employees responsible for wastewater management do not have full access to maps of the sewerage infrastructure they are supposed to govern and improve. Maps and knowledge are withheld by other municipal entities and utility providers. To map the decaying infrastructure the workers use GIS coordinates plotted onto open-access maps based on manual visits into the sewers.

African cities have historically incomplete maps and large informal settlements outside the formal maps. In many instances the exclusion of neighborhoods from official maps also means exclusion from important planned infrastructures like water, sewerage, and electricity. However, digital tools and open access to satellite images have transformed urban mapping to a potentially more inclusive and dynamic endeavor, which are equally useful for marginalized communities and ailing municipal organizations and utilities.

This paper traces the negotiations over access to urban maps, in order to understand the complex interconnection between infrastructure, urban change and politics mediated by socio-technical interventions.