Brief History

The Centre for Settlement Studies (formerly Department of Housing and Planning Research) is a research department in the Faculty of Built Environment (FABE), College of Art and Built Environment (CABE). A United Nations technical assistance team, which in 1957 reported on housing to the Government of Ghana recommended the establishment of an independent centre for research and development in housing, planning and building construction in the country.

A subsequent team, invited by the Council of the Kumasi College of Technology (now Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi) to advise on architectural education, supported the United Nations team’s recommendation and further suggested the Centre’s intimate functional association with the Faculty of Architecture of the University then. Based on these recommendations, the Centre was established in 1959 as the Building Research Group. In 1963, it was made a Department of the Faculty of Architecture and the name Department of Housing and Planning Research (DHPR) was adopted.  During the restructuring of the Departments and Faculties of the University in 2005 to operate a collegiate system, the Department was renamed the Centre for Settlement Studies (CSS), to align with changing global agenda of cities becoming the pathway for development.