A study by Dr. Kwame (Luther King) Adinkrah is calling for stricter regulation of billboards in Kumasi, warning that unchecked outdoor advertising is eroding the city’s historic Garden City identity, affecting residents’ psychological well-being and exposing regulatory gaps in urban governance.

For Luther King Adinkrah, also known as Kwame Adinkrah, Kumasi’s title as the “Garden City of West Africa” is not mere nostalgia.

“The Garden City is not a colonial label of convenience,” he said. “It is a proper urban model.”

The PhD Visual Communication Design graduate from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi traces the idea to Ebenezer Howard’s 1897 Garden City concept, an integration of vegetation and urban planning that he described as “self-contained.”

In his view, Kumasi once embodied that philosophy organically, long before the United Nations codified Sustainable Development Goal 11 on sustainable cities.

“Kumasi was way ahead of the SDGs. Kumasi was way ahead of SDG 11,” he said.

What troubles him, however, is what he describes as a new and increasingly visible form of pollution: visual pollution.

“If you drive through Kumasi, Kumasi has been overwhelmed by the proliferation of billboards. If we’re not careful, Kumasi will become a city of billboards,” he said. “We used to have a lot of parks but because of urbanisation, we’ve rezoned them.”

His doctoral research, titled Visual Pollution and Urban Livability in Kumasi, investigated how billboard proliferation is reshaping the city’s identity, affecting psychological well-being and challenging urban governance. Visual pollution, he explains, is anything that disrupts the visual field or induces stress through clutter.

“I looked closely at how the proliferation of these billboards is affecting the identity of Kumasi, to see the psychological effects and mitigation strategies to minimise them,” he said.

As part of the study, he surveyed 375 residents, interviewed officials of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), conducted observational audits and analysed relevant documents.

Dr. Adinkrah found that billboard saturation is widely perceived as one of the dominant contributors to visual clutter in the city. Seventy-one percent of respondents said visual pollution had worsened in the past five years.

More than half linked billboard saturation to mood changes, stress and declining neighbourhood satisfaction. High-traffic areas such as Kejetia, Adum, Santasi Roundabout and Suame Roundabout were cited as particularly affected.

Beyond psychological stress, the study argues that excessive billboards undermine readability and communication efficiency by flooding the visual field with competing messages. In doing so, they not only reduce advertising effectiveness but also erode Kumasi’s aesthetic coherence and cultural symbolism.

He also identified what he describes as a regulatory gap.

“We don’t have a regulation on where to place a billboard,” he said, pointing to weak enforcement and overlapping institutional mandates.

Although he acknowledges the role of the Advertising Department of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly in overseeing outdoor advertising, he believes the scope of regulation is limited, and revenue dependence on billboard permits complicates enforcement.

As part of his recommendations, Adinkrah proposes the establishment of a Kumasi Beautification Council, an independent body to vet billboard numbers, sizes, types, colours and content.

“They should be able to vet the number, type, sizes, colour and the content,” he said. “Places like São Paulo and Scandinavian countries have established councils which regulate these billboards.”

His research references São Paulo’s Clean City Law and other international zoning reforms as examples of how strong regulatory action can restore visual order.

Importantly, he argues that visual pollution is not merely an aesthetic inconvenience but a public health, cultural and governance issue.

“In gathering the data, I realised even among literates, visual pollution is treated as a distant constant,” he said. “If consciously we talk about visual pollution, we can fix the issue and gradually return to the Garden City concept.”

He recommends stricter zoning laws, clearer design standards, urban greening initiatives, improved waste management and participatory community engagement to align billboard management with sustainability principles.

For Adinkrah, the work does not end with the award of a doctorate.

“I want to see a change,” he said. “I will make sure I become the ambassador of my thesis.”