Staff Profile

I am a Lecturer and Researcher with an interdisciplinary interest in energy, environmental politics, and planning practice. My research asks planners energy questions. Specifically, if “planning is what planners do” (Vickers, 1968), my research explores the substantive and procedural planning approaches that are implemented in relation to the networked and multi-scalar landscapes, actors, infrastructures, processes, standards, requirements and normative politics about (de/carbonised, un/sustainable) energy. Do energy questions require urban/rural/regional planning as part of its network of attendant institutions? Does the colonial complicity and Global North worldview of planning render it intractable with energy future(s)? This brings broader questions about what is planning and who is the planner in our current times. In applying similar questions to other built-environment bureaucracies, what institutional politics, transformations, relations and limits emerge with regards to the crisis of energy, climate and exploitation?

I am currently a Principal Investigator on a British-Academy-Funded research project (EnergyScapes) which utilises interdisciplinary methods to explore and address the multidimensional land and livelihood challenges linked to large-scale energy infrastructures in some selected communities in Ghana. This project focuses on three geographically diverse communities situated near distinct energy infrastructures (gas, hydroelectric, and solar).

Additional research interests include: District heating and Planning Practices; Low carbon and Degrowth Futures in planning.

As a Lecturer in Urban Planning, I lead three Modules:

• Globalisation and Social Justice Project (TCP8920) – PG
• Spatial Strategies (TCP7021) – PG
• Linked Research Project (TCP8025) – PG

I also contribute to other Modules:

• Globalisation and Social Justice (TCP8921) – PG
• Practice Issues Report and Presentation (TCP4002/4003) – PG 
• Dissertation Mentoring (TCP8099) – PG
• Dissertation Mentoring (TCP3099) – UG

• Articles

  • Otchere-Darko W, Crilly M, Jenkinson T, Harper C, Ingall-Tombs E, Bryson-Harris E, Ritchie E, Siu R, Wightman S, Kearns A. Planning Sustainable Heat Networks: Governance and Sociotechnical Practices in Northeast England. Sustainability Science 2025, 1-38. In Press.
  • Otchere-Darko W, Weszkalnys G. Granite City Sunset: Uncommoning the energy transition. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2025, Epub ahead of print.
  • Otchere-Darko W. Fluid Land Values in Petro-Geographies: Temporality and Human-Nonhuman Relations in Ghana and Tanzania. Environment and Planning F 2024, 3(4), 247-267.
  • Otchere-Darko W. Scaling-up degrowth: Re-imagining institutional responses to climate change. Urban Studies 2023, 60(7), 1316-1325.
  • Otchere-Darko W, Ablo A. Labor power, materiality and protests in Ghana’s petroleum and gold mines. International Development Planning Review 2022, 44(3), 289-315.
  • Otchere-Darko W. Viewpoint: COVID-19, Spatio-epidemiology and Urban Planning. Town Planning Review 2021, 92(2), 209-213.
  • de-Vidovich L, Otchere-Darko W. Residential Segregation and Housing Policies in Vienna: A focus on immigrants of Turkish and former Yugoslavian origins. Territorio 2020, 92, 86-96.
  • Otchere-Darko W, Salah-Ovadia J. Incommensurable Languages of Value and Petro-Geographies: Land-Use, Decision-Making and Conflict in South-Western Ghana. Geoforum 2020, 113, 69-80.

• Book Chapters

  • Ablo A, Otchere-Darko W. Local Content and Local Participation in the Oil and Gas Industry: Has Ghana Gotten It Right?. In: Acheampong T; Stephens T, ed. Petroleum Resource Management in Africa: Lessons from Ten Years of Oil and Gas Production in Ghana. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, pp.291-313.
  • Ablo A, Otchere-Darko W. Petroleum Extraction in Africa: A Review of the Local Content Policies for the Oil Industry in Selected Countries. In: Onyango,G, ed. Routledge Handbook of Public Policy in Africa. London: Routledge, 2021, pp.634-644.
  • Otchere-Darko W. De-Motorization and Economic Consumer Culture; A Contradiction in the Post-Modern City? Case Studies from Copenhagen and Vienna. In: Stoustrup S, ed. Cities: Changes, Places, Spaces. Vienna: Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna, 2017, pp.94-116.

• Creative Writing

  • Weszkalnys G, Zeco M, Otchere-Darko W, Grant R. Living with Energy Transition – Soundwalk in words. 2024.