The death of Urban Street: A comparison between two residential neighborhood streets, Khulna Bangladesh

Abstract:

The Urban Street, beyond its mere functional and objective qualities, is expected to impart subjective qualities to ensure a healthy and livable community. Increasingly, both urban planners and policymakers have emphasized the significance of the physical elements (objective qualities) and activities in creating livability of street life; however, the role of subjective qualities as a component that also gives lively street life has not been adequately explored in traditional building construction laws. Traditional building planning laws only focused on a short-term master planning of single sites, which seldom give a sustainable street life for the community. Consequently, many streets particularly in developing nations are being dead and faced tremendous inadequacy. This research, therefore, is akin to that of urbanist Jane Jacobs in order to explore the livability of the urban streets to perceive the behavioral responses of people across three dimensions of streets namely spatio-physical, socioeconomic and socio-environmental. In doing so, it develops a conceptual framework is comprised of objective and subjective qualities is followed by measuring the livability of street life. This qualitative research adopts a deductive approach and two selected streets under the case study method. Sonadanga and Hazi Mohsin road in ex-colonial city Khulna, Bangladesh have been evaluating under the urban and building planning policies and practices paradigm. Multi methodological approaches, including questionnaire survey, interviews with academics and professionals, observation and document policies of urban planning, building construction laws have been accompanied. In terms of findings, it became obvious that the livability of the Urban Street in Sonadanga residential area has been compromised under the absence of Urban planning laws, building codes, and the reluctance of Urban planning authorities (KDA refers to Khulna Development Authority), the role of the architect's in the course of designing buildings and constructions and 'profit-oriented development by developers and landowners. These empirical findings hence can be useful for a global-level understating of the loss of street life under free-market conditions. Locally, for example in the context of Bangladesh, it can help concerned authorities (like KDA) to formulate the land-use policies and building codes for a more sustainable and contextually appropriate urban future.

Keywords: Urban Street, publicness, security and surveillance, livability ,Khulna