Abstract

Not very long ago Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, possessed an image of a city of greenery and water bodies. But at present, it is a usual fact that the communities of Dhaka City are deprived of open spaces. Although Dhaka City is expanding into new areas, it has been suffering from inadequate provision of open spaces and the growth in housing sector has not been followed by proportional growth in urban facilities, and consequently, the ratio of open spaces to constructed area is far below the planning standards. There is no uniformity in planning standard and spatial distribution of open spaces within Dhaka City. The planning standards only specify the area required and seldom specify where the open spaces should be located. A Location-allocation Model (Alternating Heuristic Algorithm) can be applied to determine optimal allocation of open spaces. In this paper, the integration of Geographic Information System (GIS) and Location-allocation Model is used for optimal allocation of open spaces at Uttara model town considering all aspects of spatial planning such as accessibility maximization (minimum travel distance), capacity constraints of the open space, land suitability for the open spaces, and dynamic nature of the location of open spaces (assuming the stationary nature of demand points). Uttara model town is preferred as a case study as it is a newly developed town believed to comprise of all planning standards and it has better opportunity to implement optimal allocation of open spaces. This study concludes that 500-meter buffer zone of the existing location of open spaces is 3,893,543 sq. m. which will increased by 2.11% after deriving the 500-meter buffer zone of optimally allocated open spaces based on the standard requirements. The optimal solution space, generated by the integration of GIS and location-allocation model, can be further used for spatial planning of other public facilities such as schools, hospitals, clinics, markets and fire stations.