Local partnership approach for urban development in Bangladesh: a comparative study of four participatory urban development projects

Support for Implementation of National Plans of Action or SINPA is a programme that aims to implement some of the ideas of Habitat II and National Plans of Action for Human Settlements by supporting efforts of pilot cities and disseminating the results. SINPA activities are carried out in three countries, Bangladesh, Bolivia and Zambia in three continents. Apart from these three programmes in three countries, SINPA also has a core programme at the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS) in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, responsible for overall coordination of the country specific programmes, research and dissemination. Under this core programme, a third country research component was designed to conduct a joint research together with a local research institute. There were two considerations for undertaking this research. First, the subject matter of the research should be relevant for the ongoing programmes in the three SINPA countries, as well as being suitable for wider international dissemination. And second, the selection criteria for the research subject should be manageable in such a manner that adequate secondary data and documentations are available to make the study feasible within budget and time limits. The responsibility of the present study on “Local Partnership Approach for Urban Development in Bangladesh” has been given by IHS to the Centre for Urban Studies, Dhaka, under the SINPA Core Programme Research Component.