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Kwesi DeGraft-Hanson has used skills and opportunities as
a landscape architecture faculty member at UGA to breathe
life into his Ghanaian hometown of Cape Coast. The UGA summer
study abroad program in Ghana has allowed him to help rejuvenate
the town where he grew up, the park he frequented as a child
and some adjacent streets, while teaching his students valuable
lessons about urban renewal and public service.
DeGraft-Hanson helped initiate the Ghana Study Abroad program,
and in the summer of 2001, UGA students in landscape architecture
and historic preservation programs became short-term permanent
staff members at the Office of the Regional Director, Town
and Country Planning in Cape Coast, Ghana. Students were partnered
with local staff for four weeks where they analyzed twelve
pre-identified sites that needed urban improvement in Cape
Coast. The student-practitioner teams conducted site analyses,
research and interviews with Cape Coast decision makers and
citizens, producing conceptual environmental development plans
for six of the sites.
“One of the six sites we drew rehabilitation plans for
was the historic town square, Victoria Park," said DeGraft-Hanson,
who planned and organized the class with historic preservation
faculty member Pratt Cassity. "I remember family visits
to the park, especially for the town’s annual ‘Afahye’
(harvest) festival. It was very rewarding to see the students
I work with now helping to rejuvenate the place where I grew
up.”
DeGraft-Hanson was not the only one who wanted to see the
plans. The eagerly awaited final designs were presented to
a large audience, including local chiefs and town council
members. Ghanaian television, radio and newspapers covered
the event. The work begun in Cape Coast during summer 2001
is finally yielding green results. As a result of a recent
grant from the Ghana government and the World Bank, the plans
designed by the UGA faculty and students are finally being
implemented. The town has already planted several hundreds
of street trees and made environmental improvements per the
2001 UGA planning and design documents.
This unique opportunity for partnership has produced not
only optimal solutions to urban problems but also lasting
relationships between the students and the Ghanaian counterparts.
In summer 2004, Cassity returned to another town in Ghana,
Akim-Oda, with four environmental design graduate students.
They worked on similar site improvement plans for the town,
presented to an even larger audience, and received requests
for even more UGA student and faculty participation in Ghana’s
environmental improvement plans.
Building
the New Learning Environment
The new learning environment is an academic and intellectual
community on the campus of the University of Georgia humming
with the vibrancy of the true college experience—bright
and talented students working with brilliant faculty formally
in the classroom and informally over a cup of coffee or lounging
in the greenspace which stretches from one end of campus to
the other. It is a place which recognizes that new information
technologies are transforming traditional academic disciplines
and embraces those opportunities. |
Kwesi
DeGraft-Hanson (far left) and Pratt Cassity (far right) took a group
of landscape architecture and historical preservation students to
Ghana where they worked with local officials to develop plans to revitalize
the town of Cape Coast. Today, their plans are being implemented.
