Empowering The Urban Poor Through Participatory Planning Process: A Case From Jhenaidah, Bangladesh

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A B S T R A C T The paper analyses a community development project based in Jhenaidah, Bangladesh, which evolved through broadening social capital among slum communities and formal institutions in order to bring positive socio-spatial changes in the neighborhoods. Till date, nine disadvantaged communities have formed a network for city-wide community development, have started to build and manage their own funds, built better houses for themselves, and through this process have managed to draw attention and support from the local government. Started by a small group of architects and a local NGO in 2015, and still broadening its scopes, this project can be regarded as a successful example of people-led development initiative, especially in a context where most development projects exercise limited participatory values and are dominated by unequal power dynamics. Hence issues like scaling up and economic sustainability still concern those, who can see the community-driven development process with an unbiased attitude. The overarching goal of this article is to sketch out these issues with the help of empirical understandings from the field and theoretical findings from literature on social innovation and power in planning in order to understand how to work balance between local and institutional management of projects in order to avoid perceiving bottom-up and top-down initiatives in a dualistic manner.

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Empowering The Urban Poor Through Participatory Planning Process: A Case From Jhenaidah, Bangladesh * 1Dr. MAHMUDA ALAM, 2Mrs.EMERALD UPOMA BAIDYA 1& 2 Community architect, Platform of Community Action and Architecture, Bangladesh Email:aritra.ahmed@gmail.com Email: emerald.upoma@gmail.com A B S T R A C T The paper analyses a community development project based in Jhenaidah, Bangladesh, which evolved through broadening social capital among slum communities and formal institutions in order to bring positive socio-spatial changes in the neighborhoods. Till date, nine disadvantaged communities have formed a network for city-wide community development, have started to build and manage their own funds, built better houses for themselves, and through this process have managed to draw attention and support from the local government. Started by a small group of architects and a local NGO in 2015, and still broadening its scopes, this project can be regarded as a successful example of people-led development initiative, especially in a context where most development projects exercise limited participatory values and are dominated by unequal power dynamics. Hence issues like scaling up and economic sustainability still concern those, who can see the community-driven development process with an unbiased attitude. The overarching goal of this article is to sketch out these issues with the help of empirical understandings from the field and theoretical findings from literature on social innovation and power in planning in order to understand how to work balance between local and institutional management of projects in order to avoid perceiving bottom-up and top-down initiatives in a dualistic manner. CONTEMPORARY URBAN AFFAIRS (2019), 3(2), 47-54. Doi:10.25034/ijcua.2018.4700 www.ijcua.com Copyright © 2018 Contemporary Urban Affairs. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Urbanization in Bangladesh is moving at a rapid pace. Between 1961 to 1981, the average urban growth rate was 8%. The present average growth rate is about 4.5%. According to the population census of 2001, the share of urban population was about 23.29% and at present it is approximately 37%. The importance of urban development is emphasized in terms of its role in the national economy. More than 60% of the national GDP is derived from the non-agricultural sectors that are mainly based in urban areas. The expansion of urban economy leads to the growth of urban population and concomitant haphazard urban spatial growth without planning. (District town infrastructure development project (DTIDP, 2015) The case study is from a city corporation in the western part of Bangladesh, named ‘Jhenaidah’. Jhenaidah is a medium sized municipality of Bangladesh. Jhenaidah Municipality stands on the bank of the Noboganga River. Located on 210 km west to the capital city(Dhaka) Bangladesh. Jhenaidah Municipality was established in 1958. This is a class “A” municipality. The municipality consists of 9 wards and 33 mahallas(neighborhoods). The national focus on economic development has taken Bangladesh a long way, even with some complex problems (overpopulation or natural hazards). In a short period of time, Bangladesh is on the verge of becoming ‘middle income country’ from ‘developing country’. The economic development of the cities is driving people to come to the city for work, and Jhenaidah is no exception. So, when new people are coming to the city everyday, the need of housing is increasing. Figure 1:Jhinaidah, on the map of Bangladesh (Google map, 2016) 2. Background of the community-led development project Initially, five low-income communities had formed a city-wide network. Currently, this network has 9 communities as members and few more as interested. The basis of creating the network was to start saving group within community. The member communities have been saving since 2015. After the communities started saving, they were eligible to apply for a seed fund from ACHR (Asian Coalition for Housing Rights). ACHR usually gives two kinds of fund for city-wide development; fund for building houses and for small infrastructure upgrading, such as waste management, drainage or community space making. City-wide network at Jhenaidah has received funding from ACHR for two consecutive years. The idea is to include this as seed fund in a revolving loan system. Two beneficiary communities have developed housing with this fund and they will be repaying to city-wide network. Then the next communities in pipeline will receive the fund. The network aims to expand the fund from their own savings along with the external funds. Since 2015, the communities of Jhenaidah have built 45 houses in total. In the first year (2015-2016), Mohishakundu community built 20 houses. In the second year the same community built 8 more houses. In the second year (20116-2017), Vennatola community built 18 houses. Figure 2: Geographical locations of communities of the city-wide The city-wide network has received assistance from Co-creation Architects, Platform of Community Action And Architecture (POCAA) and NGO Alive. The initiative also received advice from Jhenaidah municipality, department of Architecture of Brac University, Polytechnic institute of Jhenaidah, Jhenaidah chambers of commerce etc. Figure 3: the previous and present condition of housing Co-creation Architects is an architectural firm, which provides services to both low-income and middle- income group of people. POCAA is a platform for group of architects who introduce themselves as ‘community architect’. POCAA began its journey with an intention to work for disadvantaged communities (though not limited) by housing and community development. Alive is a local NGO, active in Jhenaidah and some other cities of Bangladesh. They have collaborated with POCAA for housing development project. They are responsible for mobilizing, skill developing and construction supervision in all communities. Figure 4:City-wide network and support groups 3. Methodology The paper has taken qualitative approach for the research. The researchers had spent several months in Jhenaidah as ‘research stay’.

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