Urban and Rural Planning course at Khulna University
Sunday, 16 September 2007
FE Special
“WE do not have enough land in Bangladesh, it is necessary to use every inch of the land effectively. For effective use of land and infrastructure, physical planning is a must. For doing so, we need to have personnel with the knowledge of urban and rural planning." said Dr. Shamim Mahabubul Haque, associate professor of Urban and Rural Planning at Khulna University.
He said that the Discipline of Urban and Rural Planning (URP) began its journey in Khulna University in 1991 with the beginning of the university. Long before the launching of URP in Khulna University, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) started offering masters in Urban and Rural Planning and students of different engineering disciplines and architectures of various institutes of the country including BUET used to get admitted in URP of BUET.
So far, around 330-350 graduates have passed from URP of KU who are now contributing to various development fields. Out of them, already four or five have acquired PhD degree.
After introduction of URP in this university, Jahangirnagar University and BUET offered graduation in URP.
"During the period 1971-1991 we developed many buildings. They had defects since they were not physically planned. At the same time, many projects were conducted and a good number of them failed thanks to non-consideration of other dimensions like physical planning. I hope with the assistance of URP graduates, this problem will be solved in the coming days," Dr. Shamim mentioned.
The dedicated teacher also commented that many structures during the regime of this caretaker government have been demolished. If the URP professionals could contribute from much earlier and if development control mechanism could work in those days of construction of these buildings, such a big loss of resources could be avoided.
At present the URP graduates have very limited organisations where they can find jobs. They can work for 64 pouroshavas (municipalities), 6 divisional city corporations and the Planning Commission. Even these organisations cannot ensure proper career progression for them. If the government takes proper policy, these jobs could be more lucrative. The government indeed has a great deal of scope to create more jobs for the URP graduates, Dr. Shamim commented.
URP department of KU faced severe shortage of teachers at the outset. By this time, it has overcome the problem and some of the graduates of the discipline have joined the teaching faculty of the same discipline.
"We are not complacent about the contribution of our department but we are happy. Surely, we have miles to go. We expect more co-operation from the government and other sources for better evaluation and utilisation of our graduates. Development works should be directed in right direction so that we can use our land resources better with the contribution of these such URP graduate-planners," Dr. Shamim opined.
“WE do not have enough land in Bangladesh, it is necessary to use every inch of the land effectively. For effective use of land and infrastructure, physical planning is a must. For doing so, we need to have personnel with the knowledge of urban and rural planning." said Dr. Shamim Mahabubul Haque, associate professor of Urban and Rural Planning at Khulna University.
He said that the Discipline of Urban and Rural Planning (URP) began its journey in Khulna University in 1991 with the beginning of the university. Long before the launching of URP in Khulna University, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) started offering masters in Urban and Rural Planning and students of different engineering disciplines and architectures of various institutes of the country including BUET used to get admitted in URP of BUET.
So far, around 330-350 graduates have passed from URP of KU who are now contributing to various development fields. Out of them, already four or five have acquired PhD degree.
After introduction of URP in this university, Jahangirnagar University and BUET offered graduation in URP.
"During the period 1971-1991 we developed many buildings. They had defects since they were not physically planned. At the same time, many projects were conducted and a good number of them failed thanks to non-consideration of other dimensions like physical planning. I hope with the assistance of URP graduates, this problem will be solved in the coming days," Dr. Shamim mentioned.
The dedicated teacher also commented that many structures during the regime of this caretaker government have been demolished. If the URP professionals could contribute from much earlier and if development control mechanism could work in those days of construction of these buildings, such a big loss of resources could be avoided.
At present the URP graduates have very limited organisations where they can find jobs. They can work for 64 pouroshavas (municipalities), 6 divisional city corporations and the Planning Commission. Even these organisations cannot ensure proper career progression for them. If the government takes proper policy, these jobs could be more lucrative. The government indeed has a great deal of scope to create more jobs for the URP graduates, Dr. Shamim commented.
URP department of KU faced severe shortage of teachers at the outset. By this time, it has overcome the problem and some of the graduates of the discipline have joined the teaching faculty of the same discipline.
"We are not complacent about the contribution of our department but we are happy. Surely, we have miles to go. We expect more co-operation from the government and other sources for better evaluation and utilisation of our graduates. Development works should be directed in right direction so that we can use our land resources better with the contribution of these such URP graduate-planners," Dr. Shamim opined.