Prior to this, attempts at the founding of the Institute had been simultaneously made in Accra, where majority of the Professional Planners worked with the Civil Service; and in Kumasi where another concentration of Planners worked with the Town and Country Planning Department and the Department of Planning, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi.

The idea of establishing the Ghana Institute of Planner was muted by Mr. E. Yaw Baah, the Assistant Chief Physical Planning Officer, Kumasi, who called a meeting of Professional Planners in Kumasi at the Kotoka Hall of the Hotel de Kingsway on 2nd November, 1968.

The purpose of the meeting was to establish an Association of Professional Planners. In fulfilment of this objective, Mr. P.N.K. Turkson, the Chief Physical Planning Officer on 5th December 1968 invited all known Professional Planners throughout the country for an inaugural meeting at the Conference Hall of the State House on 12th December, 1968.

At the meeting, fifty (50) Professional Planners including ten (10) expatriates were present. Of these ,the largest number (35) were Civil Servants in the Physical Planning Department of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, 2 with the Tema Development Corporation and 13 from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, (KNUST) Kumasi.

Messrs P.N.K. Turkson and E. Hornsby-Odoi were elected Chairman and Secretary respectively. Mr. Y. Opoku-Afriyie there-upon moved “That we here gathered constitute ourselves into an Association of Professional Planners”. On secondment by Mr. P. Ofori-Nyarko, the motion was carried and the Association thereupon was formed.

The drafting of the constitution was entrusted to a Kumasi based group of Planners and led by Messrs E. Yaw Baah, E.K.A. Tamakloe, A.L. Hagan, P.A. Nortey and M.B. Essam. The Constitution drafting team took two months to present the Constitution which was adopted at a special meeting held in the Conference Hall of the State House in Accra on 28th March 1969. This meeting was attended by fifty-three professional planners and it marked the formal founding of the Ghana Institute of Planners.

Until after the 2000s, GIP has strictly been about Planners with land use and spatial planning background. Following some reforms in the course structure at the Department of Planning in KNUST, the focus of planning education shifted somewhat to the production of disproportionately large numbers of Policy Planners to the neglect of Town Planning. With such large numbers of the proportion of Policy Planners in the country, GIP modified its admission requirements to allow all shades of planners to enrol with the Institute.