Infrastructure in Khulna

Khulna is the third city in Bangladesh and is the main gate to Mongla port and Sunderbans forest. Because of its strategic location, the city has the potential to become a big metropolitan city. As shown in the master plan of Khulna, big infrastructure projects have already been implemented like the by pass of Khulna and Rupsha Bridge, which helped shape to what it has become now. Other proposed projects are still to be implemented. These big infrastructure elements are seen to serve as part of the potential projects that will serve as gateway to a more economically developed Khulna. However, the need to conduct further study on future infrastructure for Khulna should be given due considerations.
Infrastructure is seen as a key concept in redefining urban design. Infrastructure is more than highways, bridges, sewerage and power lines, because it serves as connective tissues that allow convergence and mobility of people, places, social institutions and even contact with the natural environment .*"Infrastructure is the safety net of the social system." It is shorthand for the structural underpinnings of the public realm.
Taking off from the situation of Khulna, at present, it housed big infrastructure projects apparently seen not to be in congruence with the supposedly scale of the city. Infrastructure programs and projects are crucial in shaping the developmental aspirations of any city, but the condition has brought negative results and impact on the villages structures and the open space structures which are the main components of Khulna that give it its own urban quality and identity.
One of the strengths of Khulna is the existing river that used to be the main line of transport of the city. This river has the potential to serve as a means to develop the area as part of an urban regeneration. So Infrastructure can be used as a tool to connect the fragmented villages in Khulna without destroying their structures and their qualities.



HERBERT MUSCHAMP, ARCHITECTURE VIEW; Two for the Roads: A Vision of Urban Design, in: http://query.nytimes.com
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