[1] It is the only institution in Ghana professionally recognized by its government to train personnel to promote, coordinate and manage development at the national and sub-national levels.
The programme prepared students for the intermediate examinations of the Town Planning Institute of Great Britain.
After passing the intermediate examination, students were sent to universities in Great Britain to obtain full professional qualifications.
In 1961, the United Nations assisted the Government of Ghana to establish an Institute for Community Planning on the Campus of Kumasi College of Arts, Science and Technology.
In 1963, the Institute for Community Planning was absorbed by the newly created Faculty of Architecture of the Kumasi College, whose status had been raised a year earlier to that of a university.
As a result, separate undergraduate degrees in the three professional fields were instituted in 1969 with a first year programme structured for all the disciplines.
Codenamed SPRING (“Spatial Planning for Regions in Growing Economies”), the two-year programme initially required international attendance, with the first year spent at Dortmund and the second in Ghana.
[2] To that end, it has short-, medium- and long-term goals to reorganize by assigning staff, especially in areas more critical to the development needs of the country.
The course introduces students to the formulation of economic, social and environmental policies and programmes together with their poverty and distributive implications.
The programme trains the professional manpower required for the planning and management of the growing urban and rural settlements in Ghana.
Embedded in the structure are options for sub-specializations in sectoral policies such as health, education, transportation and communications and energy.
The programme is based on a course unit system and offers a course structure of study combining applied macro-economics, development economics, quantitative analysis, project appraisal, and the techniques of social and spatial analysis with the wider issues of national development and economic management.
The latter seeks to promote academic research and advancement of knowledge in planning science and practices as a profession.
The former is intended to promote academic research and advancement of knowledge in development planning related sciences.
The latter is intended to promote academic research and advancement of knowledge in planning sciences and practice as a profession.