BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN: Universiti Brunei Darussalam undergraduates from the Development and Planning Issues Module made a site visit to Bandar Seri Begawan for their assignment on Revitalising BSB Centre recently, Borneo Bulletin reported.
The tour was led by their lecturers, Dr Yusnani Mohd Yusof-Kozlowski and Dr Marek Kozlowski, who familiarised over 40 students with the site’s geography. These students consisted of mostly of Year 2, Year 3 and Year 4 students.
Pursuing the aim of the course, their assignment was to provide the students with a deeper understanding of development and planning issues. It offered students the opportunity to examine real-world data on current debates regarding sustainability from an urban-planning perspective.
The graduate attributes developed from the assignment included the ability to work and learn in a team effectively. They also gained the ability to formulate and investigate problems, create solutions, innovate and improve current practices.
In addition, they also gained the ability to apply critical reasoning to issues through independent thought and informed judgement as well as the ability to process material and to critically analyse and integrate information from a wide range of sources and the ability to evaluate opinions, make decisions and to reflect critically on the justifications for decisions using an evidence-based approach.
Planning can assist decision-making by developing a range of options and recommending preferred strategies for the consideration of decision-makers. In this way, development is streamlined along sustainability principles which are usually embedded at the stage of developing the plans.
Future issues are minimised thus maintaining a relatively conflict free co-existence between people, the environment and economic growth. One such planning decision urgently required is creating liveable cities by ensuring sustainable development of the city centre.
The problem in point is the centre of Bandar Seri Begawan currently suffers from a lack of vitality such that it loses out to other centres such as Gadong-Kiulap and Citis Square-Times Square-Airport Mall. So these students need to figure out what could be done to improve the urban viability and vitality of BSB centre.
In the morning session site visit, students used Google Map to identify and colour the commercial areas, green spaces, roads, laneways, water features, attractive features, distinct features, and other land-uses in and around the study area of the BSB centre. In addition, students will be given a list of planning colours for each land-use.
Alternatively, in the night session, students were required to access the viability of the area, how they feel when they walk into certain laneways, and many more.
In Phase 2 of their report, they chose the intensification between public spaces and laneways or the BSB Waterfront. They will write a literature review pertinent to the area selected for intensification, then carry out a SWOT analysis and to evaluate the feasibility of revitalising the selected place in Bandar Seri Begawan.