ASSESSMENT OF POLICIES AND BARRIERS IN MAKING CITIES RESILIENT IN KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA

Abstract

Resilient city planning has been characterized as capacity and capability to absorb and recover from shocks and stresses that effect system, structure and infrastructure due to hazards. Therefore for a community, resilience is more focused on the process of transformation and ongoing changes happening in the city due to changing times and needs of future development. However integration of resilience principles into planning system of the city is limited. There are certain resilience regulatory indicators that are needed to be adopted in our land use planning and zoning ordinance to help communities achieve resilient city status. The aim of this research is to access the policies and barriers in making city resilient with respect to its land uses. For this purpose relevant resilient land use planning principles and their regulatory indicators were studied from literature. Furthermore, the land use policies at National, Provincial and District level were analyzed and the presence of resilience principles were examined in these policies of five districts of KP through content analysis and availability index. Moreover, based on expert opinion, barriers were also identified, that hinders the adaptability and promotion of resilient land use practices in Pakistan. From the study, it is concluded that spatial planning, zoning and management is an important tool of resilient city development. Among all cities it was analyzed that Peshawar city has the most regulatory indicators available in its land use policies, whereas in Charsadda has the least numbers of these regulatory indicators embedded in their policies. Lack of resources, professional unawareness, lack of regulation and monitoring and rapid change in government officials are recorded as the key barriers for the lack of implementation of resilient land use policies