There we go again – the shaming of Dhaka as 171st, the third worst, in the liveability index of 173 cities around the world. And then follows the usual: a general indignation at being ranked below bombarded Kyiv and sectarian Karachi; scepticism about Euro-American measures of our lives; immediate newspaper editorials and op-eds citing what went wrong; and subsequent write-ups such as, perhaps, the one you are reading now.
Meanwhile, planners and policymakers, the city corporations and the unnayon katripokkhos, those who manage the fate of the city, remain steadfast in their silence on why Dhaka remains far from being either a liveable or a good city.
At a recent public conversation on architecture and the city, in which I participated, the moderator asked a very pertinent question: “What is a good city?” The responses are, of course, diverse.
While the city may be humanity’s most unique creation on earth, we still struggle to understand its nature and where we want to go with it. In creating a functional modern city, we speak of providing basic urban services, such as a reliable water supply, a sewage system, adequate healthcare, successful transport systems, and so on. In humanistic and democratic terms, we speak of the right to the city, including equal access to the public realm and equitable participation in the city’s resources. How people live together, or not, that is, how they acquire housing and form communities, remains a key benchmark of a good, humane city.
The most evident measure of a good city is the quality of urban life provided through public spaces and amenities – how people navigate and experience the commons. Many have written about the sorry state of our public spaces: either they do not exist, or whatever does exist is in a degraded condition or has become an object of privatisation.
Claiming that walkability is the sign of civility in a city, I have argued that the state of our footpaths indicates how we regard public life on the street. In most cases, footpaths do not exist in Dhaka, and where they do, they are interrupted by broken tiles, police boxes, vendors, construction materials, or are often so high that you would need a ladder to climb onto one (in some places in Dhaka, a footpath is three feet high!).
However, in that conversation on what makes a good city, my immediate response was that a good city is one that maintains an ecological balance with its natural assets and resources. I had Dhaka on my mind, and, quite coincidentally, this was at a time when Dhaka, Chittagong and other cities were being drowned by the monsoon rains. While the term “ecology”, like sustainability and resilience, is becoming clichéd, it still retains the capacity to speak about an integrated world under threat.
A 30-minute drive outside Dhaka still reveals the reality of an integrated landscape. Rivers, canals, waterways, ponds, floodplains and agricultural fields completely girdle the city in what I see as a terraqueous mesh. Few people recognise that Dhaka is a fragile landmass, virtually an island framed by five rivers and intersected by a fluid landscape. This is the gift of the delta.
The outcome of conventional planning is the erasure of water, producing a dense urban environment built on a prejudice in favour of dry land. Photo: Star
“>
The outcome of conventional planning is the erasure of water, producing a dense urban environment built on a prejudice in favour of dry land. Photo: Star