Richmond Juvenile Ehwi

Richmond is an urban planning and housing academic with interest in how planning policy, governance and professional practice materially affect the lived experience and life chances of people and their communities across the Global North and South. He obtained both his doctoral and MPhil degrees from the University of Cambridge, and his bachelor's degree from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, all with a focus on planning and real estate topics in Ghana – the proliferation of gated communities, land title registration and compensation valuation using the cost method.

He joined the School of the Built Environment at Oxford Brookes University as a Senior Lecturer in Town Planning in September 2023. Prior to this, Richmond worked as a Research Associate at the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge. During this time, he led projects on social value in the built environment, planning and net-zero-carbon housing, ESG principles in the built environment, modular homes for people facing homelessness, and citizen engagement in smart city development and governance.

Richmond is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). He has taught and supported student learning at various educational levels: the Foundational Year at Cambridge Ruskin College, undergraduate studies at the Department of Land Economy in Cambridge and KNUST, and master's programs in the Departments of Land Economy and Engineering at Cambridge University, as well as the Institute of Distance Learning at KNUST. He provided mentorship to two PhD students and examined MPhil dissertations during his time at the University of Cambridge.

His research engages profoundly with contemporary urban planning and housing challenges that confront cities, communities and governments. This includes investigating the role of planning in facilitating the transition to net-zero-carbon housing, addressing homelessness through modular housing, and planning responses to the rise of new cities and gated communities in sub-Saharan Africa. Currently, he is working on research that aims to establish a conceptual distinction between Environmental Social Governance (ESG) and Social Value in the built environment. He is also focused on creating context-appropriate toolkits to empower planning authorities in sub-Saharan African cities to manage the growth of new cities and gated communities. Additionally, he is co-investigating pandemic-informed urban governance and the lived experiences of households in African cities