BANGLADESH INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AND STRATEGIC STUDIES

GOOD URBAN GOVERNANCE IN MANAGING URBAN SECURITY: THE DEVELOPING COUNTRY CONTEXT

Author: Razia Sultana

DOI Link: DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.56888/BIISSj2013v34n1a4

ABSTRACT

By now, ensuring Good Urban Governance (GUG) has been one of the major challenges for urban government in the developing countries. Though the main objective of GUG is to ensure equal facilities to urban people, in most cases, it is not materialised. One of the reasons is lack of proper urban planning and management, which by and large, results in unplanned growth of slums and illegal settlement. Due to rapid migration of people from rural to urban areas, urban governments are facing numerous challenges to meet the basic needs of urban people. The rapid inflow of additional people creates extra pressure on water, housing, electricity, gas and other means of survival. This has also instigated various social, political, institutional, economic and structural forms of violence in the cities. At present, urban governments of many developing countries have failed to tackle various forms of crimes and delinquencies. This raises the important query as to how GUG is interlinked with urban security issues? It is in this context that the major objectives of the paper are to perceive the overall phenomenon and outline the various dimensions of urban insecurity issues in relations with the GUG. Based on the evidences of violent activities in different cities, some key challenges of urban government have been discussed. Deriving the causes and consequences of urban violence, some recommendations have been put forward from developing country context.