Incorporating Participatory Planning and Quality Function Deployment in Urban Planning

Abstract

Urban Planning is a technical process concerned with the control of the use of land and design of urban environment to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities. Outcomes from the urban planning process are detailed plans. In Bahrain the detailed plans are developed through a lengthy two-stage process, namely, design and implementation. During this lengthy process the documented design variations were found to be the main cause for implementation delay. In addition, it was discovered that land owners exclusion from the urban planning process caused major disagreements, between the urban planning authorities and the land owners. Accordingly, this paper presents an investigation into the applied urban planning process in Bahrain, and proposes a solution that incorporates Quality Function Deployment (QFD) technique. The study is based on face-to-face interviews, questionnaire, Delphi method, and a case study (North Tubli). The results of this study concluded that using participatory planning and QFD within the urban planning process enables evaluation of the different alternative plans, based on scientific and systematic procedures. In addition, it ensures that land owners and community members requirements are satisfied.

Untitled

“…Otherwise, an ANV council's approval of a plan that it may not have even read amounts to token participation. The resulting plan, passed without meaningful community input, may never be implemented [77,78,79].…”