Success story: Abdulla - Al Kafy, 2019 Local Pathways Fellow
Project: Effective Land Use Management for Ensuring Inclusive and Sustainable Urbanization in Rajshahi City, Bangladesh
Fellow: Abdulla - Al Kafy, 2019 Local Pathways Fellow (Rajshahi City, Bangladesh)
CHALLENGE
Rajshahi has not yet produced a macro scale policy/strategy actions for effective land use management to ensure inclusive and sustainable urbanization. In terms of technical capacity and personnel, the relevant institutions are not capable enough, and a shortage of technical human resources exists. Rajshahi is continuously experiencing difficulties in coordination among the relevant institutions and fail in creating an influential institutional culture for interoperability. The majority of local authorities have financial and economic deficiencies in the provision of urban services. Insufficient numbers of governmental subsidies and incentives regarding recycling of wastes might cause failure to achieve the targets of SDG11. One of the main challenges of rapid urbanization in Rajshahi is limiting migration from rural areas to urban areas, which causes agglomeration in and around the city. Some novel approaches are required to create economic and industrial attractiveness in the small towns and rural areas with potential for development.
SOLUTION
As Rajshahi city facing rapid urbanization in recent years, it’s also offering city opportunities to improve the lives of people, enhance economic development, and make the city more sustainable in the future. The city is going through an unprecedented land-use transition, and for this reason, the ratio of land use consumption to population growth rate is an imbalance. Poorly managed urban growth and development create environmental consequences, exclusion, and vulnerability, damage natural resources, and create difficulties for marginalized populations. To overcome the problems and make the city more inclusive and sustainable, some effective solutions are:
a. Enhance linkages between national/local planning and budgeting instruments through coordination among all city-level development and service providing agencies, strengthening national and local institutional policy frameworks for sustainable urbanization;
b. Integrated and multidimensional systems approach through
i. Integrated development of the city and its peripheral areas,
ii. Use of latest technologies for sustainable urban growth monitoring,
iii. Addressing data gaps and improve the data quality with up to date information,
iv. Collaboration between government and NGOs,
v. Increase public awareness (workshops, seminars) about the importance of sustainable urbanization in the city,
vi. Convene local, national, and international multi-stakeholder dialogues to develop solutions to complex urban development issues,
vii. Proper enforcement of land use laws and regulations;
c. Monitoring and reporting of urban development progress with the help of
i. Ensuring the good urban governance in city development and service providing agencies,
ii. Capacity development of city/municipal development authorities.
The above suggesting approaches are necessary for achieving sustainable urbanization and making cities inclusive for human settlement.
IMPACT
The proposed solution will make the Rajshahi city planned and sustainable by ensuring an effective land use management plan. Also, planned urbanization helps to improve the resilient capacity of the environment and contribute more to economic growth. The proposed solutions will also increase the opportunity to develop compact cities in different parts of Rajshahi city, which will maintain well infrastructural design, reduce the cost of energy provision, ensure better transport facilities, provide more open spaces. In addition, the most significant impact of the proposed solutions will be the integration between government and NGOs in Rajshahi, which will help in executing any plan in an orderly way.
A WORD FROM THE FELLOW
I have been invited to discuss my proposed project on Effective Land Use Management for Ensuring Inclusive and Sustainable Urbanization in Rajshahi City, Bangladesh with A. H. M. Khairuzzaman Liton, Honorable Mayor, Rajshahi City Corporation. The mayor provided positive feedback about my project and shared his thoughts on achieving the SDGs in Rajshahi city by 2030. He also invited me to work as a Technical Consultant for the upcoming SDG projects. It’s a big achievement for me, and it would have been impossible without LPF.
The LPF has given me the opportunities to meet fellows from different parts of the world and share ideas and solutions. During the Local Pathways program, I have developed valuable connections with local community leaders, key government officers, landowners, local citizens, and NGOs working on urban development or management project in Rajshahi. LPF provided me with a platform and guiding framework that helped me to connect with leading urban development experts and practitioners. Besides, LPF allowed me to enrich my knowledge of
Urban systems, sustainable urbanization, and urban poverty,
Wealth and inequality in urban areas,
Human development for ensuring good public health, education, and minimizing gender issues in the world,
Sustainable universal urban services, infrastructure, and environment,
Cities resiliency, sustainable environmental planning, and management,
Mitigate and manage disaster risk in urban areas,
City governance for ensuring sustainability.
As a Local Pathways fellow, I presented a paper focused on how rapid and unplanned urbanization will replace our valuable land and natural resources at the International Water Conference, 29-30 January 2019, Kuakata, Bangladesh.
During the Local Pathways program, I have developed a few concepts based on the lectures and was able to publish three peer-reviewed journal papers.
1. Modelling future land use land cover changes and their impacts on land surface temperatures in Rajshahi, Bangladesh (DOI: 10.1016/j.rsase.2020.100314)
2. Impact of Landcover Changes on surface temperature in Rajshahi District of Bangladesh: A Remote Sensing Approach (DOI: 10.21523/gcj5.19030102)
3. Identifying Most Influential Land Use Parameters Contributing to Reduction of Surface Water Bodies in Rajshahi City, Bangladesh: A Remote Sensing Approach (DOI: 10.21523/gcj1.18020202)
Abdulla - Al Kafy, Local Pathways Fellow (Rajshahi, Bangladesh)