Accessibility and Inclusiveness Policies for Public Open Spaces in Fragile Urban Contexts: Official Discourses and Actors’ Perceptions in Kaya, Burkina Faso

Access for all to public open spaces such as green spaces, public gardens, urban parks, public squares, playgrounds and recreation areas in cities is a major challenge for achieving the SDGs. According to the New Urban Agenda guidelines, the planning, design, preservation and use of public spaces require appropriate policy and legal frameworks, standards and practices, and holistic and integrated approaches [1]. However, in the context of sub-Saharan Africa, a number of authors have highlighted the failures of urban policies in the face of the challenges of socio-spatial injustices created by accelerated urban growth [2-5].

As early as the 1980s, an analysis of urban planning policies in developing countries showed that, faced with the limitations of urban planning based on large-scale urban development schemes, public authorities were turning to smaller-scale urban projects and urban management, often involving the participation of local people and the private sector [6]. Despite these adjustments, the literature two decades later has shown that socio-spatial inequalities in sub-Saharan cities remain unresolved by the succession of urban policies developed [5, 7, 8]. According to Owusu and Crentsyl [9], the reforms inspired by neo-liberal paradigms since the 1980s that have guided policies to modernise African cities have led to unequal and fragmented urbanisation, calling into question the right to the city for all.

In Burkina Faso, urbanisation has intensified over the past decade as a result of the cumulative effect of population growth and the security crisis, which has led to an influx of displaced people from rural areas to urban centres considered safer [10, 11]. This urbanisation is fuelling multidimensional fragility, illustrated by significant political, economic, social, security and climate challenges [12, 13]. In fragile cities, social inequalities are glaring and public authorities have insufficient capacity to respond to political, social, economic, security and environmental challenges [14-17].

In Kaya, one of the secondary towns hard hit by the effects of the security crisis, several multinational and national actors are working alongside the State and the municipality to implement urban projects aimed at providing access for all to basic urban infrastructure and facilities [18]. Although the literature deals extensively with the challenges of urban planning in West Africa and the structural limits of public policies [2, 5, 7, 19], few studies have looked in depth at the extent to which the context of fragility influences the effective implementation of urban policies, particularly those aimed at inclusive access to public open spaces. Similarly, few studies have analysed the perceptions of those involved in urban public action (public officials, private sector actors, multinational partners, civil society organisations) on these issues in a context of fragility.

Considering the perspective of sustainable urban development set by the New Urban Agenda [1], the following question is at the heart of the article: How do official discourses and the perceptions of actors involved in urban public action explain the challenges of implementing policies for accessible and inclusive public open spaces in Kaya, Burkina Faso? We hypothesise that challenges perceived by public action actors in implementing policies for accessible and inclusive public open spaces in Kaya are manifestations of urban fragility, where deficits of authority, capacity, and legitimacy undermine policy effectiveness. The study aims to explore how official discourses and the perceptions of urban public action actors explain the challenges of implementing policies for accessible and inclusive public open spaces in Kaya, Burkina Faso. The study uses a qualitative approach and a theoretical framework built around the right to the city, spatial justice, urban fragility and public action to conduct the investigations. The data is drawn from a documentary analysis of national and local urban policies and from non-directive interviews conducted with urban public action actors. The article proceeds with the literature review, then methods, followed by results and discussion, and concludes with implications for policy in fragile urban contexts.

3.1 Study area

The study area is Burkina Faso, with the town of Kaya as the empirical field site. Burkina Faso, the former Upper Volta, is a landlocked Sahelian country in West Africa with a surface area of 274,000 km² and an estimated population of 20,505,155 in 2019, 51.7% of whom are women (Figure 1) [41]. The urbanisation rate rose from 6.4% in 1975 to 26.1% in 2019, quadrupling the urban population in 45 years. Since 2015, mainly due to the spiral of terrorism and political instability in the Sahel region, Burkina Faso has been classified as a fragile country [13, 42]. Kaya, a secondary town in the north of the country, has been severely affected by the combined effects of rapid urbanisation, insecurity and the influx of internally displaced people [14].

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3.2 Study design

The nature of the research question guided the choice of a qualitative approach to conduct the study. This so-called comprehensive approach seeks to analyse the actors as they act, based on their discourse, their intentions and the terms and conditions of their actions and interactions [43]. At the heart of the qualitative approach is the actor, that is the individual or collective person who is not considered as a simple subject but as an agent of action [44]. Two qualitative methods were used to conduct the study: documentary analysis and individual interviews. Based on the theoretical foundations described above, the conceptual framework of the study (Figure 2) illustrates the relationships between urban fragility, public action, the right to the city, spatial justice and accessibility and inclusiveness of public open spaces.

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Figure 2. Conceptual framework

3.3 Methodological process

The methodological process adopted for this qualitative study is summarised in Figure 3, which outlines the sequence linking data collection, analysis, and interpretation.

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Figure 3. Overview of the qualitative methodological process

3.4 Documentary analysis

Bowen [45] defines documentary analysis as a qualitative and systematic approach that consists of examining and interpreting documents (printed or digital) with a view to extracting meaning, better understanding a phenomenon, and producing empirical knowledge. This method was chosen for our study because of its advantages: the availability of public documents, which are generally freely accessible, and the approach's efficiency, which allows us to obtain the data from the document selection stage onward.

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Figure 4. Burkina Faso national policy architecture

Table 1. List of documents selected

The targeted documents span multiple levels of Burkina Faso’s national policy architecture (Figure 4). Moreover, operational policy instruments that explicitly frame the accessibility and inclusiveness of public open spaces at the national and municipal levels were preferred. Documents were screened for (i) scale of action (national frameworks and Kaya-specific instruments), (ii) nature and legal force (laws, strategies, master/land-use plans, guides), and (iii) relevance, authenticity and public accessibility. We initially identified a larger pool, but removed obsolete drafts and broad cross-sector strategies that only indirectly affected public open spaces. The final corpus of eight documents provides non-redundant coverage of the policy landscape related explicitly to accessibility and inclusiveness of public open spaces. The selected documents are presented in Table 1.

3.5 Conduct of the interviews

To gather the perceptions of urban public action stakeholders, we opted for the research interview as defined by Wengraf [54]. In this approach, the aim is to encourage the interviewee to produce continuous discourse, with the interviewer limiting himself to follow-up questions designed to elicit further speech or to clarify what the interviewee is saying. This approach allows the respondent's own representations, experiences, and logic to emerge while minimising the influence of the researcher's imposed structure.

3.5.1 Participants and recruitment method

The interview involved 14 male and female participants aged between 35 and 60. Profiles span five actor groups: central state administrations, municipal services, urban planners/consultants, development partners, and civil society. Inclusion required direct involvement in POS planning/management or related urban policies. Participants were recruited by purposive sampling to cover these five groups, complemented by targeted referrals. Table 2 presents interview participants, codes and characteristics.

Table 2. Interview participants, codes and characteristics

Sample size followed the information power principle [55]: given our focused aim, a theory-informed coding frame, and information-rich informants, a modest number of participants was sufficient. We applied an iterative stopping rule: after coding 12 interviews, we continued until two consecutive interviews produced no new first-order codes. Saturation was reached at 14 interviews, and the final two interviews primarily elaborated existing themes rather than generating new ones. While Guest et al. [56] advise larger samples for heterogeneous groups (often 20 to 40 participants), our narrow scope, high participant expertise, and triangulation with eight policy/planning documents increased information power and justified closure at 14.

3.5.2 Data collection

Data was collected using non-directive interviews in French, the official language of Burkina Faso. The theme of the interview was "The challenges of implementing accessibility and inclusiveness policies for public open spaces in Kaya, Burkina Faso". The data was recorded using smartphones and then transcribed into Word. All participants provided informed consent, and all data were anonymised.

3.6 Thematic analysis of documents and interviews with NVivo 15

Thematic analysis consists of identifying the ideas that emerge from the data and organising them into themes related to the issue under study of Fereday and Muir-Cochrane [57]. The thematic analysis in this work was based on a hybrid analytic strategy. A deductive parent codebook was derived from the research questions and relevant literature, then inductively expanded during interview coding with child codes for unanticipated patterns. The consolidated codebook was then applied to all interviews and documents. To avoid the risk of circularity [43], relevant codes were added as the reading progressed when the data revealed aspects not anticipated by the theory. The coding grid was entered, the documents coded and the results interpreted using NVivo 15 software.

The unit of analysis was the paragraph for interview transcripts, and the policy article or paragraph for documents. We kept a full audit trail, including a versioned codebook, analytic memos for each interview and document, and brief notes documenting key analytical decisions. The first author carried out coding. To strengthen dependability, we used memo-based checks of how codes were applied, peer debriefing with the senior co-author, and a stability check in which two transcripts were re-coded after two weeks. A sample of the code tree is provided in Figure A1.

3.7 Methodological limitations

The criteria used to select documents for the documentary analysis, although justified, may introduce a selection bias, as some potentially important documents may have been omitted or may not have been available in a public version. In addition, the choice of the non-directive interview technique, although suitable for exploring the representations and logics of action of the stakeholders, exposes the researcher to an interpretative bias when analysing the verbatims, particularly in the choice of coding, categorisation and hierarchisation of themes. Despite these limitations, the triangulation of the data (official documents and interviews), the transparency of the methodological procedures and the support of the conceptual framework reinforce the internal validity of the study and the relevance of the interpretations proposed.

5.1 A discrepancy between official discourse and actor perceptions challenges the right to the city and spatial justice

The results revealed that official discourse clearly affirms the political will to promote accessible and inclusive public spaces. At the level of Kaya, this desire is reaffirmed in urban planning documents. This discourse is contrasted by the perceptions of those involved in urban public action, who describe an illusion of accessibility due to an ineffective political will. These perceptions are supported by the observation that planned open public spaces have been built into the urban fabric but have not been developed or have been diverted for other uses. This contradiction highlights the challenges that the city of Kaya, in particular, and the cities of Burkina Faso in general face in making a reality of the right to the city as advocated by UN-Habitat [1], which defends equitable access to urban resources. The results are in line with the findings of Owusu and Crentsyl [9], who stress that African countries adhere to the international discourse on the right to the city enshrined in the SDGs and the New Urban Agenda, but continue to implement official practices or tolerate popular practices that are totally out of step with them. This observation supports Watson analysis [7], which shows that, the practice of urban planning based on master plans or project-based urban planning with the involvement of international partners has not succeeded in reducing socio-spatial inequalities in African cities.

5.2 Shortcomings in public action

Despite a relevant link between the challenges, objectives and implementation strategy of urban policies, the perceptions of the actors reveal profound institutional weaknesses: lack of financial resources, absence of political will, misuse of public open spaces, lack of monitoring and transparency, as well as low levels of citizen participation. This situation highlights a lack of public action in relation to public open spaces, as defined by Lavigne Delville and Ayimpam [37], who argue that public action involves the interaction between the state and a range of players that enable public policies to be implemented. Furthermore, the results are in align with Amoush et al. [58] findings that underline that factors such as corruption, lack of financial resources and regulatory gaps influence negatively planning for sustainable development.

The case of the diversion of urban land dedicated to public open spaces shows that the translation of official discourse on accessibility and inclusiveness into reality is at the heart of often contradictory stakeholder logics and power games between the administration, technical partners, the private sector and users, as Crozier and Friedberg [40] pointed out. These observations also reveal the conflictual dimension, as highlighted by Kumar [38], which characterises urban public action in the case of the implementation of policies on accessibility and the invisibility of public open spaces. Lascoumes and Le Gales [39] provided a profound explanation. The gap observed between discourse and reality points to a biased agenda-setting process in which the accessibility and inclusivity of public open spaces, although included in urban policies, remain marginal in political and budgetary decisions.

5.3 Accessibility and inclusiveness policies put to the test in a context of fragility

Although urban policies have highlighted a context of fragility, particularly political (political and institutional instability) and security (terrorist attacks, influx of internally displaced persons into cities), they are having difficulty overcoming these challenges to become operational. The actors' perceptions reinforce this position by emphasising that, as a result of the security crisis, open public spaces are being diverted from their initial function (leisure, greenery, meeting place) to accommodate internally displaced persons, in the case of the town of Kaya. Furthermore, the overall challenges related to governance, planning and design, and shortcomings of public action refer to fragility, which can be analysed through the three classic dimensions of fragility defined by Ziaja et al. [30] (see Figure 7).

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5.4 Mechanisms linking urban fragility to weak implementation of public open space policies

In light of the findings from the documentary analysis and the participants’ accounts, the mechanisms linking urban fragility to the weak implementation of accessibility and inclusiveness policies for public open spaces can be understood as stemming from two major causal dynamics.

First, insecurity has led the State and municipal authorities, including the municipality of Kaya, to revise public action priorities. In very practical terms, a substantial share of available resources has been reallocated to emergency responses and humanitarian assistance for internally displaced persons. This budgetary reallocation has taken place at the expense of planned investment in the development. As a result, projects intended to ensure physical and social accessibility for all have stagnated or been abandoned, thereby reinforcing inequalities in the use and enjoyment of public open spaces.

Second, political and institutional instability undermines the continuity of urban policies and the authority of local institutions. The installation of a transitional regime, together with changes across the state and municipal administrative apparatus, has weakened both policy follow-up and the enforcement of public policies concerning equitable access to public open spaces. Each political transition brings a reconfiguration of priorities and a loss of institutional memory, which slows decision-making and implementation processes and reduces the authorities' capacity to uphold regulations governing the occupation and use of public space.

These dynamics resonate with broader findings in the literature. Bryceson [16] highlights that insecurity in fragile African cities often compels local governments to redirect budgets toward immediate social stability rather than long-term infrastructure and public-space investment. Likewise, Resnick [8] shows that recurrent political turnover and elite competition undermine urban policy continuity and the authority of local administrations, further weakening the implementation of accessibility and inclusiveness policies.

5.5 Between discourse and reality: contributions to understanding public action in a fragile context

The results of the study on the challenges of implementing accessibility and inclusiveness policies for public open spaces allow us to draw several major conclusions that go beyond the case of Kaya, shedding light on the constraints of urban public action in a context of fragility. In line with authors who have worked on the challenges of urban policies in sub-Saharan African cities [2, 3, 7, 58, 59], the study highlights the gap between planning geared towards sustainable urban development objectives and the reality experienced and observed by the actors interviewed. Policies show a clear desire to promote the accessibility and inclusiveness of public open spaces, but institutional, financial and security constraints and the practices of actors produce illusory and theoretical accessibility and spatial injustice. So, despite the diversity of urban policies that have been tried out over the decades, particularly urban planning and project-based urban planning, the study shows that the challenge lies not so much in the quality of urban policies as in the development of public action capable of meeting the challenges of the multidimensional fragility that hinders their implementation. Figure 8 details the recommendations for effective implementation of public open spaces accessibility and inclusiveness policies in a context of multidimensional fragility.

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Figure 8. Recommendations for effective implementation of public open spaces accessibility and inclusiveness policies in a context of multidimensional fragility

This work is supported by the World Bank, the Association of African Universities and CERViDA-DOUNEDON.