ENVISIONING THE CLIMATE CHANGE RESILIENT CITIES IN BANGLADESH USING FORESIGHT APPROACH

Abstract

Since the climate change significantly alter the city dynamics, governance for urban sustainability and resilience is crucial for strategic decision making. The objective of this research is to identify the factors affecting the functional systems of vulnerable cities and find ways of achieving urban resilience in intermediate cities of Bangladesh as climate change mitigation strategy. The research methodology adopts a systematic and foresight approach that conceptualizes the city as functional system, investigates the impact of climate change, incorporates foresight tools to envision the future of cities, fleshing out the vision’s implication on the functional system and lastly involving experts and stakeholders to formulate strategy. The study shows that climate refugees create huge urban demand but centralized and poor urban governance fails to support and provide services to these people leading to social discrimination and political unrests. The foresight exercise involves experts and stakeholders, whose feedback constructs the probable future scenarios, determine the implications and identify ways to enhance urban resilience.

Keywords: Climate change, Resilience; Foresight approach, Intermediate cities.