This book presents a critical analysis of the 'resource curse' doctrine and a review of the international evidence on oil and urban development to examine the role of oil on property development and rights in West Africa's new oil metropolis - Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana. This author shows how institutions of varying degrees of power interact to govern land, housing, and labour in the city, and analyses how efficient, sustainable, and equitable are the outcomes of these interactions. It is a comprehensive account of the tensions and contradictions in the main sectors of the urban economy, society, and environment in the booming Oil City and will be of interest to urban economists, development economists, real estate economists, Africanists and urbanists.

Dr. Franklin Obeng-Odoom is an urban researcher currently based at the School of the Built Environment at the University of Technology, Sydney in Australia where he is the Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow.

PART 1 The Economics of 'Black Gold' 1. Africa's Oil Wealth and Crude interpretations of its Ramifications 2. Oil in Orthodox Theory - Repudiation and Riposte 3. Ghana's Oil Industry PART 2 From Fishing Settlement to Oil City 4. Sekondi-Takoradi: The City and Its History 5. Urban Economic Development Under Oil 6. Fishers and Farmers in a Changing City PART 3 Towards the Good City 7. Compensation and Betterment 8. Taxation 9. Socialisation of Oil Rents 10. Sekondi-Takoradi: Challenges, Prospects, and Lessons