Sustainability of urban parks planning policies in Bangladesh: a comparative analysis

Abstract

Urban parks, the key domain of sustainability of the community, integrate social, economic and ecological benefits. Current research are consistently concerned in planning for sustainable and resilient cities through preserving urban green areas are mainly concerned with a large, bio-diverse and relatively endangered ecosystem. While such efforts act as benchmarks for assessing progress towards sustainability and resilience goals, obviously much less attention is being paid to that type of small-scale green areas more specifically urban parks in cities and their benefits to societies. Thus, the extension of these benefits whether or not is equitably distributed across diverse urban populations in cities is a remarkable quarry in urban design policies and practices, especially in developing nations. This research, therefore, aims to analyze of conventional urban design practice on sustainability, more specifically on ecosystem services. Since ecosystem services are vary geographically, the policies even under national guidelines, need to be localized to appreciate the strength of local ecology. Hence, first, this paper develops a theoretical framework of a sustainable urban park with arguing that beyond biodiversity and socio-economic status, urban parks can also inform urban planning policy and practices to promote sustainable urbanism through practices of urban form. Second, it assesses sustainability of urban parks to compare similar urban parks in two different topographies like biodiversity with varied ecosystem services. This qualitative research adopts deductive approach and case study method to evaluate and compare the planning policies of such two parks in two different cities in Bangladesh. Thus, Hadis Park in industrial city Khulna and Biplob Uddan in coastal seaport city Chittagong respectively have taken from two different ecological viewpoints. Multi methodological approaches, including questionnaire survey, interviews with academics and professionals, observation and document policies of the urban park in terms of ecological and planning viewpoints, have been accompanied. Findings reveal that urban park planning policies in both cities mostly focus on generating social and economic activities only relatively for short-term basis rather than on promoting ecological sustainability and biodiversity for long-term maximization. The study, therefore, concludes that traditional urban design practices merely motivated, or supportive to provide sustainable urban park design policies by municipalities and professionals. Further, multi-disciplinary efforts including ecology, landscape architecture, urban planning and urban design simultaneously well informed by locals are essential to assess and develop ecologically sensitive urban design and planning policies.