Project Details
Projekt
Spatial transformation and informal urban governance in Dhaka, Bangladesh
Applicant
Professorin Dr.-Ing. Sabine Baumgart
Subject Area
Human Geography
Term
from 2006 to 2016
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 31579994
Under the impact of globalisation Bangladesh is rapidly urbanising. By 2020 almost half of the population of Bangladesh will live in urban areas. The metropolitan area of Dhaka will come under intensive pressure to provide land for additional housing considering the restrictions set by flood hazards. The shrinking supply of land suitable for urban development will further increase building densities in informal inner city settlements where the poor are seeking access to urban livelihoods. In the pursuance of livelihoods the urban poor run the risk to sacrifice the functionality of the city by blocking vehicular access, encroaching upon land reserved for public infrastructure, threatening public health and settling on flood-prone land. The statutory planning system is, however, ill equipped to establish an appropriate balance between the vital interests of individual households and enterprises on the one hand and public welfare on the other. The proposed project is based on the proposition that the interface between statutory planning and `social regulation¿ at the grass-roots has to be developed in order to achieve more sustainable patterns of urban growth. The exchange of strategic information between the different levels of urban planning governance constitutes, therefore, the central component of the research design. Information on future states of the city derived from urban growth modelling and communicated in scenarios will be shared with both informal institutions of `social regulation¿ and the statutory planning system in participatory procedures in order to test the usefulness of planning information for pro-poor and sustainable urban growth regulation.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
Participating Person
Professor Dr. Volker Kreibich
