Sustainable Development is one of the most important arguments now a day. How we can make our world more sustainable in nature is the most significant phenomena for all of us. It is very difficult to transform the old, traditional and historically significant places to a more sustainable and modern in nature without hampering their values and historic resources. Cultural significances of old historic places represent the sense of connectivity and provide a continuation of past experience to the present and future generations (ICOMOS, 1999). These are the old urban characters which shapes the modern urban culture and identity over the time. They should treat as the most important belongings of history to go forward towards more advanced future. Future is always shaped by the past. Hence if we forget our history; it would be very difficult to get proper guidelines for future development. It is necessary for us to preserve our deteriorating heritage resources to develop our own future. However, globalization, rapid and uncontrolled urbanization and technological advancement make these attempt challenging. Urban heritage conservation in a very integrated way would be one of the solutions for conserving old values and ideas with their own traditional nature. Conservation with sustainable manner should be taken as the top priority in all development planning agendas. Moreover, proper urban heritage conservation can help to transform historical places as the source of history, culture and socio-economic advancement for the local community and can change unsustainable community into more sustainable in nature. Dhaka is one of the major old cities in South Asia. It has a various combination of historic places and communities which give Dhaka a unique urban character. It has long history of urbanization and this urban growth pattern has influenced mainly by the topography, socio-economic and socio-cultural characteristics along with inherent morphological quality. However over population growth, uncontrolled urbanization, poor infrastructure facilities and weak urban management contribute to deteriorating these urban heritages rapidly. There are several discussions about urban heritage conservation of developing countries but little discussions have found which has focused on the conservation with empowering local traditional economy to develop the sustainable community. By enhancing local economy through proper planning and policy and promote sustainable tourism can contribute to conserve heritage resources of Dhaka and support sustainable community development. Two historically significant communities are chosen for representing Dhaka‟s heritage which is unique in nature for their traditional professions, significant local arts, handmade crafts, life style, religious and social festivals, urban fabric and built heritage. These are Benarashi Palli at Mirpur and Shakhari Bazaar at old Dhaka. They had a self-sustained economy in the past which becomes declining day by day due to rapid and poor urban development management and ignorance of historical values and ideas. However, still these two communities are trying to survive with their own efforts and make them represented of the glorious past to us. The main focus of this study is to revive their past well-sustained economic conditions with proper conservation of heritage resources and community participation. At the same time explore several guidelines of comprehensive conservation for sustainable urban community in Dhaka. The research identifies that there is a severe lacking of integrated conservation policies in Dhaka. In fact, the importance of heritage conservation is still very far away from national planning policies in Bangladesh. Dhaka has several development control agencies however; they are not so well-integrated and well-organized to provide a comprehensive heritage planning policies for Dhaka as well as Bangladesh. Moreover, incompetent rules and regulations with scattered organizations make this problem more severe. The study has tried to incorporate all these issues and formulate a comprehensive conservation planning for Benarashi Palli and Shakhari Bazaar as well as Dhaka. Furthermore, the study tries to accommodate sustainable tourism for providing a sustainable urban economy which has always ignored in Bangladesh context. However, tourism could be a strong way of promoting heritage conservation in Dhaka which has already followed by many developing countries in South Asia. / published_or_final_version / Urban Planning and Design / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Urban Planning and Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

Zugl.: Berlin, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2008 u.d.T.: Bertuzzo, Elisa Tullia: Fragmented perspectives, transiting signs of urbanity

Megacities of over 10 million population are a phenomenon not seen before in human history. Among 19 Megacities, 14 are in developing countries and 11 are in Asia. Dhaka represents one of the most extreme examples of rapid Megacity growth having a mere 129,000 at the start of the 20th century, 417,000 by 1950 and more than 12 million in 2001. How can a city be governed that has increased 30 times in size over a person’s lifetime? This thesis makes a case for integrated Metropolitan Regional Governance (MRG) of the Extended Metropolitan Region of Dhaka. The growing problems of Asian Megacities in general and Dhaka in particular are outlined, showing how governance has developed in a sectoral and national way rather than being place oriented. This has fractured and become totally inadequate as a means of solving the deep environmental, social and economic problems of the Megacity. The governance issues of Megacities are traced to the primary problem of the need for integrative functions in strategic and statutory planning as well as development facilitation of the Extended Metropolitan Region (EMR). Ten core principles of Metropolitan Regional Governance are established. Without this, the Megacity’s functions of infrastructure, investment, housing, environmental management, employment etc. are not coordinated or prioritised in ways that lead to ‘common good’ sustainability outcomes. The ten principles are applied to four Asian Megacities – Metro-Manila, Tokyo, Bangkok and Jakarta – to confirm their relevance and application before applying them to Dhaka. The problems of Dhaka are outlined then an analysis of Dhaka governance options is attempted based on the ten core principles of MRG. Four possibilities are analysed and a way forward is suggested combining the options. The proposed structure will build on the present system with greater responsibilities for strategic planning, statutory planning and development facilitation. It will also build up municipalities through a more transparent and engaged local planning process and create partnerships for infrastructure development. The proposed governance structure would use the dynamism of the Megacity to create sustainable solutions and hope for the future of the city. The key to implementation will be finding the political solution to make such painful change, and training professionals in the broad integrative skills of urban sustainability and community engagement that are required for the region as well as the participation and partnership skills at local level.

University, Diss., 2004--Bonn.

Master's thesis. / Format: PDF. Bibl.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Murdoch University, 2006. / Thesis submitted to the Division of Arts. Includes bibliographical references (p. 313-340).

The Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, is the world’s fastest growing primate city, having nearly 15 million people and approximately 6 million living in slum areas. Their high population density and growth rates, coupled with inadequate and inappropriate water and sanitation (WatSan) facilities, are creating social, economic and environmental effects. Until recently, several attempts have been made to provide infrastructure services to those slums. But the extent of the services is unsatisfactory due to resource constraints and a burdensome concentration of slums that contaminates the city ecology on a broad-spectrum. In consequence, the trend of development ventures through government (GO) and non-government organizations (NGO) is not only disappointing but also questionable due to disastrous project histories. The complex social dynamics of these informal settlements, together with inappropriate or inadequate WatSan facilities and incompetent governance systems obstruct the pace of sanitation interventions. Apart from this, Bangladesh has succumbed to political indiscretion and bureaucratic intemperance which have severely diminished the capacity of the GOs and NGOs to perform at a reasonable level. The result is all round deterioration in the quality and adequacy of the urban basic services and people of the informal settlements are the worst sufferers. It is widely recognized that the poor communities mostly have no proven demand for improved sanitation facilities, as their basic priority, rather, is managing their next meal. In this situation, some NGOs have come forward with their ‘flexible’ and ‘tailor-made’ working strategies developed from previous project experiences whereas government agencies are more geared to ‘facilitation’ and continue with their ‘supply-driven' strategy, ignoring criticisms and pitfalls. As one of the most dysfunctional sectors in Bangladesh, urban sanitation is traumatized and its coverage is affected by several interconnecting factors while the government continues to bypass questions related to slum improvement arguing that the slums are illegal settlements and do not qualify for government services. Several NGOs have come forward to work in the urban sanitation sector and in most instances, the poor slum-dwellers have appreciated the NGOs’ participatory working strategies. In fact the dynamics of the ‘social-technological-governance’ system of the slum areas often determines the success of sanitation interventions. In this research, the vibrant dynamics of ‘social-technological-governance’ systems and the roles of GO-NGO service providers and beneficiaries in the selected slums are critically analysed through a qualitative methodology and a bottom-up approach that has the potential to identify inherent policy weaknesses and factors that facilitate or hinder the successful implementation of sanitation programmes. This research is entirely based on empirical evidences and the qualitative assessment of field data that were collected from five informal settlements of Dhaka city and associated GO-NGO sources. The outcome of this research suggests that the impacting factors are not equally weighted in WatSan projects as some could be defined as crucial and influencing factors that shape other interrelated factors. In order to smoothen the pathways of different WatSan projects it is necessary to carefully identify and restrict those problem-breeding factors on a priority basis. This research also describes different stakeholders’ practices and links with existing policies to identify the gaps between them. Here, the proposals are made for reality-based, short-term and long-term solutions and policy recommendations that might offer guidelines for addressing the overwhelming slum sanitation agenda in urban Bangladesh.

Due to rapid urbanization agricultural lands in metropolitan areas are shrinking.  As a result our cities are getting more dependent on distant places for food, which is making the food system vulnerable. In the context of rapid urbanization and climate change a resilient agricultural system of Dhaka could be one of the key to ensure a sustainable future. To investigatethe impact of urbanization and climate change on the resilience of the agricultural system of Dhaka a resilience assessment of agricultural system of Dhaka has been done. The study followed the resilience assessment wordbook for practitioner as method of assessment. As methods to collect and analyze data field studies, interview, GIS analysis, policy analysis were conducted. This study shows that, urbanization is directly responsible for changes in both quality and quantity of the agricultural land of Dhaka whereas climate change does not affect directly. Even with this rapid urbanization there is still scope to take measures to make agricultural system resilient by preserving land within Dhaka metropolitan area. Therefore two Strategies have been proposed. First one is; increasing local food production without administrative reformation and the second; reducing the future demand by administrative and economic decentralization of Dhaka. Both of the strategies will require strong political will along with recognition of importance of agricultural land within the city boundary.

<p>This research project is a comparative study of management of two university libraries (University of the Western Cape and Dhaka University) from two different countries (South Africa and Bangladesh). This research was to identify and document how the functions of management are applied in both libraries.</p> <p><br /> A sample of the two university libraries&rsquo / users, librarians, and library staff were taken. The questionnaire, interview, observation and documentary sources of information were major methods of data collection. In order to provide a brief presentation on how the management functions were applied at other university libraries, a description of how some university libraries in the U.K, U.S.A, Eastern countries and Africa are given. The findings of the study revealed that the problem of inadequate financial support is true for both University libraries, and is the major cause amongst other weaknesses. Both libraries still use a large percentage of non-professional staff and the library service is in desperate need of personnel. However, the observed difference between DUL and UWCL in this comparative study was significant. Services offered in both libraries differ in some cases such as: Consortia, Inter library loans, OPAC, CD-search, e-journals and multimedia. These areas still need to be developed at DUL. UWC have the most of these facilities. Although it needs to improve on aspects such as e-journals, access to data-bases and open access on the Internet.</p>