This article illustrates how episodes in local and international political economy shape urban transport in Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana’s oil city, and how resultant dynamics in the global economy make the attainment of sustainable urban development illusory. Investment in road production and maintenance is overwhelmed by the recent rapid increase in the number and use of automobiles in the city. At the same time, official disinterest persists in planning for alternative sustainable forms of transportation. While another scenario is possible, by showing the structural and administrative orientation toward productivist sustainable development ideals and its ecologically destructive consequences, I argue that it is increasingly likely that the Sekondi-Takoradi of the future will come to exhibit the contradictions in the capitalist drive to “annihilate space through time.”
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