Nathan Tetteh
Doctor of Philosophy candidate
Architecture, Urban planning, Urban design
Biography
Nathan Tetteh is a PhD candidate at the Melbourne School of Design, Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning, University of Melbourne. He is a recipient of the prestigious “Melbourne Research Scholarship”, awarded by the University of Melbourne to high-achieving students undertaking a research study. His research focuses on the development of a Wellness Optimisation Planning Framework for the delivery of Sustainable Affordable Housing using empirical evidence from formal and informal settlements in Ghana. Before commencing his doctoral studies, Nathan worked as an Energy System Consultant at MicroEnergy International GmbH in Germany and was also a Visiting Researcher at the Workgroup for Economic and Infrastructure Policy (WIP) at the Technische Universität Berlin (2021-2022).
From 2019 to 2021, Nathan pursued an MSc in Energy Science (Renewable Energy Policy option) at the Pan African University’s Institute of Water and Energy Sciences in Algeria, with a full scholarship from the African Union, emerging as the Top Graduate of his cohort. Before that, he obtained an MPhil in Urban Planning (2017-2019) from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana. In 2016, Nathan graduated as the overall best student from the University for Development Studies, Ghana, with a BSc in Planning (First Class), and was also the first student in the history of the Faculty of Planning and Land Management to obtain First Class Honours in the BSc Planning programme. He was among the first four professionally trained teachers in Ghana to receive the Excellence Award for best-trained teachers after obtaining a Diploma in Basic Education (First Class Honours) from the University of Cape Coast in 2010, and taught for 2 years as a professional teacher in Ghana.
Nathan’s research interest lies primarily in the Sustainability of Cities, with a particular emphasis on Renewable Energy, Housing and Environmental Planning. He has a couple of peer-reviewed publications in reputable journals. Currently, he serves as a sessional tutor at the Melbourne School of Design and is an active member of the Zero Energy Mass Custom Home (ZEMCH) research group.
Thesis
Planning for Sustainable Affordable Housing: A Wellness Optimisation Philosophical Approach from Formal and Informal Settlements in Urban Ghana
The Sustainable Affordable Housing (SAH) literature argues for maximising occupant wellness and creating opportunities that will enable occupant households and their neighbourhoods to realise broader economic, social and environmental sustainability outcomes. However, affordable research, especially in developing countries today, tends to highlight a process and outcome mismatch, such that the occupants of affordable housing today often have to make significant lifestyle adjustments and trade-offs in their wellness needs.
Proponents of compact city and neighbourhood planning philosophies generally agree on the need for planning to facilitate an optimal nexus between people, their work and their environment in a way that maximises their opportunities. Even though some scholars describe the interconnectedness of planning and sustainable affordable housing delivery as thin, the influence of philosophical models on the process and outcome of housing delivery is less contested in the literature. The existing debates tend to agree that urban land economics influences land use planning and housing location decisions, which affects housing affordability and neighbourhood attributes. However, the conceptual linkages between affordability and density in affordable housing delivery that promotes occupant wellness in affordable housing delivery today remain unknown.
In response to this knowledge gap, this thesis seeks to conceptualise the linkages between densities and affordability that promote occupant wellness and facilitate the realisation of broader sustainability outcomes in affordable housing delivery in Ghana. The thesis then analyses the responsiveness of Ghana’s affordable housing delivery to the conceptualised linkages based on the needs and wants of occupants and proposes a new evidence-based planning model for optimising the conceptual linkages towards maximising user wellness. Overall, the thesis demonstrates a paradigm shift from the existing housing infrastructure planning philosophies that are largely unsustainable, to one that responds to and addresses all three dimensions of sustainability: economic (sustainable affordability), environmental (sustainable densities) and social (occupant wellness) in the housing infrastructure planning and delivery process.