Urban planners, academics and other speakers on Saturday stressed that political commitment was prerequisite for balanced urbanisation and decentralised development.
Their remarks came at an event titled 鈥楤angladesh鈥檚 balanced urbanisation and decentralisation of development: policy and planning proposals鈥� organised by the Bangladesh Institute of Planners at its office.
Presiding over the event, the organisation鈥檚 president Adil Muhammad Khan said that without political commitment and bureaucrats鈥� willingness, decentralised development in the country was not possible.聽
Noting that concentrating all kinds of development and facilities in one city particularly in the capital, as happened in the case of Dhaka city, was a fascistic practice, he said that the interim government, after taking over following the ouster of the fascist Awami League regime, hardly took any decentralisation measures, so far.聽
Excessive urbanisation was concentrated mainly in the megacities of Dhaka and Chattogram, Adil Muhammad said, observing that it had led all kinds of problems to go from bad to worse.
It caused all sorts of problems, from traffic congestion to environmental pollution to service shortages, housing deficits and uneven economic growth only to deepen further, he said.
Its fellow member Anisur Rahman Tuhin, while presenting the keynote presentation, said that Bangladesh had been urbanising faster than neighbouring countries, with 40 per cent of the population living in cities or urban towns as of 2022, compared with just 8 per cent in 1972.
In India, about 20 per cent of the population live in cities or urban towns, he mentioned.
He recommended political decentralisation by creating autonomous local bodies independent of central authority, administrative decentralisation with local staff autonomy, and fiscal decentralisation by providing local governments with financial resources and the authority to raise revenue.
The speakers also emphasised decentralising development through a 鈥榥ational spatial plan鈥�, creating a regional disparity index, building local-level capacity, ensuring citizen engagement in the decentralisation process, and adopting a polycentric urban development policy.
Dhaka city鈥檚 development authority Rajdhani Unnayan Kartipakkha鈥檚 chief town planner Md Ashraful Islam, Institute of Planners founding president Golam Rahman, Khulna University professor Fawzia Farzana, and Jahangirnagar University associate professor for department of urban and regional planning Farhadur Reza also spoke at the event, among others.
