برنامه ریزی استراتژیک در پایداری شهری Khulna، بنگلادش

ABSTRACT Urban sustainability through strategic planning: A case of metropolitan planning in Khulna city, Bangladesh

It is obvious that planning process is changing over time to address the rapid changing nature of problems associated with city structure. The major changes have been observed globally in the post World War II era that called for massive physical and social reconstruction especially in Western Europe (Khan & Swapan, 2013). In response, British town planning legislations became an important model for controlled urban growth and modern town planning (Dear, 1986). During this time, blueprint planning or master plan approach was introduced which essentially based on rational planning (forecasting, analysis and landuse allocation), leading to the development of long term physical blueprint plans (Rakodi, 2001). Following this trend of physical planning traditions, developing countries were also influenced by the ideas of modernization. Therefore the urban planning practices in Bangladesh during 1960s were highly influenced by this type of physical planning practices introduced by British planners. The 1960 Master Plan of Dhaka and Khulna city is the reflection of such physical planning tradition. Therefore it can be observed that the master plan approach was exported to South Asia along with planning legislation and development control regulations replicated from the British system (Khan & Swapan, 2013). However, this blueprint approach of physical planning was contested by the rapid urbanization process and resource constraints in developing countries (Rakodi, 2001). In this context, the master plan of 1960 for Dhaka and Khulna city failed to achieve the ultimate goal and urged for a new approach of planning. The global planning traditions were also changing at that particular time. The urge for participatory planning through incremental planning by Lindblom (1959) and advocacy planning by Davidoff (1965) were the major shift in global planning paradigm. This shift led towards the incorporation of strategic planning approaches in planning practices globally. Even in Bangladesh there was a shift of planning approaches followed by the replacement of the master planning approach by strategic planning approach. To combat the rigidness of master planning approach and to introduce more open ended and participatory policy framework, strategic planning was introduced in Bangladesh in 1980. In this context strategic planning process was incorporated in the plan preparation for Khulna City Master Plan 2001. Though namely the plan is strategic in nature but to what extent it has been strategic in practice, is a matter of question and urban sustainability is the major concern in this process. Accordingly, this paper argues that participation, sustainable utilization of resource and equity can be instrumental for promoting strategic planning to ensure urban sustainability. In this paper the case of Khulna city, Bangladesh will be analyzed through the basic notion of strategic planning described above to find whether the approach was strategic or not. In addition the case will be analyzed to justify how the issues of urban sustainability were addressed through different policies to promote strategic planning.