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This paper discusses competing visions of the decolonization of Ghana's economy during the first decade of the country's independence from Britain (1957–1966), and the agency and horizon of choice available to the Ghanaian decision-makers in charge of implementing these visions. It focuses on Ghana's construction industry, both as an important part of the national economy and as a condition for Ghana's broader social and economic development in the context of colonial-era path-dependencies and Cold War competition. By taking the vantage point of mid-level administrators and professionals, the paper shows how they negotiated British and Soviet technological offers of construction materials, machinery, and design. In response to Soviet claims about the adaptability of their construction resources to Ghana's local conditions, the practice of adaptation became for Ghanaian architects and administrators an opportunity to reflect on the needs, means, and objectives of Ghana's construction industry, and on broader visions of Ghana's economic and social development. Beyond the specific focus on the construction industry, this paper conceptualizes the centrality of adaptation in enforcing technological hegemony during the period of decolonization, and discusses African agency beyond the registers of extraction and resistance that have dominated scholarship on the global Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Artist Intervention: Asutsuare Rebound" explores the transformation of the village of Asutsuare in Ghana from a state-led socialist agricultural and industrial development center to its current status as a manufacturing hub for paper and plastic products. Through interviews with retired employees and younger residents, the project highlights the reuse and revalorization of modernist planning in Asutsuare, challenging dominant narratives of postcolonial melancholy and postsocialist nostalgia. The repurposed infrastructure of the former sugar factory has become nodes of new activities, fostering individual entrepreneurship and community vibrancy. The project invites a rethinking of the future beyond modernist techno-utopias and neoliberal short-termism, acknowledging the complexities and ambiguities of long-term planning in shaping the landscape of Asutsuare. [Extracted from the article]

The roundtable discussion at the University of Cambridge delved into the theme of heritage as a relational and normative concept, exploring the interplay between tangible and intangible aspects of heritage using examples like the Oil Rivers in Nigeria and the Durgapuja festival in Kolkata. Panelists emphasized the complexities of heritage as a dynamic and multifaceted concept that blurs the lines between materiality, experience, and ethics, stressing the importance of considering lived experiences and relational aspects to fully grasp its significance. The discussions also touched on inheritance, the impact of socialism on spaces and practices, and the role of property in shaping generational experiences, highlighting the evolving nature of heritage and the importance of understanding the relationships between past, present, and future in shaping our environments and experiences. [Extracted from the article]

This article revisits comparative urban studies produced during the Cold War in the framework of 'socialist worldmaking', or multiple, evolving and sometimes antagonistic practices of cooperation between socialist countries in Eastern Europe and decolonising countries in Africa and Asia. Much like the recent 'new comparative urbanism', these studies extended the candidates, terms and positionalities of comparison beyond the Global North. This article focuses on operative concepts employed by Soviet, Eastern European, African and Asian scholars and professionals in economic and spatial planning across diverse locations, and shows how they were produced by means of 'adaptive' and 'appropriative' comparison. While adaptive comparison was instrumental in the application of Soviet concepts in countries embarking on the socialist development path, appropriative comparison juxtaposed concepts from various contexts – whether the 'West' or the 'East' – in order to select those best suitable for the means and needs on the ground. This article argues that this conceptual production was conditioned by the political economy of socialist worldmaking and shows how these experiences are useful for a more critical advancement of comparative urban research today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]