Homo Sapiens
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2015
- Messages
- 9,641
- Reaction score
- -1
- Country
- Location
Urban development in Bangladesh
- Thread starter Bilal9
- Start date
Bilal9
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2014
- Messages
- 26,569
- Reaction score
- 9
- Country
- Location
Recent Dhaka shots courtesy of MirzaZeehan...combination of old and new....
Gulshan Avenue
Banani Rd 11 at Old Airport Rd
Gulshan-2 near Westin
Purana Paltan with Bait-Ul-Mukarram on the left
Tejgaon I/A near upcoming Holiday Inn
Two story Gulshan DIT-2 Market (being demolished) and upcoming 27 story 255 rm Hilton @right
Motijheel (Main Downtown area in Dhaka) Skyline
Shapla Chattar, Dutch Bangla Bank Tower, Zaman Basic Bank Tower (22 stories)
Gulshan Avenue
Banani Rd 11 at Old Airport Rd
Gulshan-2 near Westin
Purana Paltan with Bait-Ul-Mukarram on the left
Tejgaon I/A near upcoming Holiday Inn
Two story Gulshan DIT-2 Market (being demolished) and upcoming 27 story 255 rm Hilton @right
Motijheel (Main Downtown area in Dhaka) Skyline
Shapla Chattar, Dutch Bangla Bank Tower, Zaman Basic Bank Tower (22 stories)
Bilal9
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2014
- Messages
- 26,569
- Reaction score
- 9
- Country
- Location
Some under-construction renders for commercial properties from Borak Real Estate...
Borak South Park
Borak Mehnur
Borak Acropolis
Borak Zahir Tower
Some upscale condominium properties completed by Unique Properties - their residential subsidiary...
Unique Loft - Residential
Unique Promenade - Residential
Borak South Park
Borak Mehnur
Borak Acropolis
Borak Zahir Tower
Some upscale condominium properties completed by Unique Properties - their residential subsidiary...
Unique Loft - Residential
Unique Promenade - Residential
Banglar Bir
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2006
- Messages
- 7,805
- Reaction score
- -3
- Country
- Location
12:00 AM, October 29, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 05:35 AM, October 29, 2017
Get good governance
Bangladesh needs strong control structure for planned urbanisation, tell speakers at an int'l conference
Jatiya Sangsad Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury speaks at a conference titled “Cities Forum: Building Knowledge Networks and Partnerships for Sustainable Urban Development in Bangladesh” in a Dhaka hotel yesterday. World Bank, Municipality Association of Bangladesh, Institute of Architects Bangladesh, Bangladesh Institute of Planners, and Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh organised the two-day programme beginning on the day. Photo: Star
Staff Correspondent
Strong governance is the key to planned urbanisation in Bangladesh, said urban experts from home and abroad at an international conference in Dhaka yesterday.
“The current governance structure is not conducive for Dhaka to become a liveable metro city,” said Balakrishna Menon Parameswaran, lead urban specialist of the World Bank, adding, “Combination of leadership, planning and investment, and meaningful consultation is required for transforming Dhaka into a liveable city.”
Lack of proper policies or wrong policies or a combination of both was holding back the desired urbanisation in Bangladesh, he said. In an unprecedented event, 20 lakh people moved into Dhaka in the last five years, he said.
The World Bank, Municipality Association of Bangladesh, Institute of Architects Bangladesh, Bangladesh Institute of Planners, and Institute of Engineers Bangladesh jointly organised the two-day conference on “Cities Forum: Building Knowledge Networks and Partnerships for Sustainable Urban Development in Bangladesh” at the Dhaka Sonargaon Hotel.
Balakrishna underscored the need for empowering the elected city mayors.
“Strong urban governance is what we need,” said Rene Holenstein, the Swiss ambassador to Bangladesh.
Qimiao Fan, World Bank country director, said only well-managed urbanisation could lead to sustainable economic growth, allowing productivity and innovations.
In recent years, Bangladesh has experienced an annual urbanisation growth of 3.3 percent with 5.4 crore people living in the urban centres and the number is predicted to double in the next three decades or so, he said.
Urban areas contribute 60 percent of the country's GDP, and Dhaka and Chittagong together share 47 percent of the total output, Fan said.
This urbanisation is expanding job and manufacturing opportunities, he said, adding that more work was needed to fully capture the enormous benefits of urbanisation.
Bangladesh needs to address the critical challenges brought about by the massive unplanned urbanisation, characterised by high-level poverty, and generally poor housing conditions and liveability.
More than one out of five urban dwellers in Bangladesh lives in poverty, Fan said.
According to Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, nearly 62 percent of the urban population, which is about 3 crore people, currently live in informal settlements and slums.
The country's urban centres need a minimum of $2 billion annual investment for basic infrastructure, such as roads, water and sanitation, to meet the demand of the rapidly growing urban population, Fan said.
In Bangladesh, only three percent of the total public expenditure is on urban infrastructure development, which is very low by global standards. Bhutan spends 16 percent, Nepal 10, Indonesia 34 and South Africa 52 percent, he said.
Dhaka South City Corporation Mayor Mohammad Sayeed Khokon said lack of adequate urban planning has led to today's civic woes, traffic congestion and flooding.
Narayanganj City Corporation Mayor Salina Hayat Ivy said there had always been an effort to keep the local government institutions submissive.
“We as the elected mayors cannot exercise the power provided by the present law and cannot play our mandated roles,” she said.
Different municipalities have different problems and the government needs to address them separately, she said.
Md Akter Mahmud, a professor at the department of urban and regional planning of Jahangirnagar University, pointed out several challenges in urban planning in Bangladesh.
He said Dhaka became the centre of politics, employment, amenities and facilities. “Every year 100,000 people are being added to existing population,” he said, adding that 41 percent of total urban population live in Dhaka.
“Local bodies are not equipped or do not have the technical and financial strength. They also do not have the visionary leadership,” he said suggesting that mayors of municipalities increase income generation capabilities instead of depending on funding from donor agencies and the government.
Akter said every year the country loses one percent of arable land due to unplanned urbanisation.
Robert Cervero, a professor at the department of city and regional planning of the University of California, urged focusing on Dhaka's transportation problems.
He said, “Yes, we need flyovers but there has to be other facilities and strategies to address the city's transportation problems.”
He emphasised the need for introducing mass transportation facilities to curb traffic congestion.
Ralph Becker, former mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah, said galvanising collaboration among all stakeholders with a common goal of public good is what a mayor could facilitate.
Chief guest Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury said a comprehensive approach of professional groups and experts was needed to address the complex urbanisation issue.
Md Abdul Baten, president of Municipal Association of Bangladesh, chaired the inaugural session in which 300 mayors, councillors and urban practitioners took part.
Mel Senen S Sarmiento, who had been the mayor Calbayog city of the Philippines for nine years, also spoke on the occasion.
http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/get-good-governance-1483120
Get good governance
Bangladesh needs strong control structure for planned urbanisation, tell speakers at an int'l conference
Jatiya Sangsad Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury speaks at a conference titled “Cities Forum: Building Knowledge Networks and Partnerships for Sustainable Urban Development in Bangladesh” in a Dhaka hotel yesterday. World Bank, Municipality Association of Bangladesh, Institute of Architects Bangladesh, Bangladesh Institute of Planners, and Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh organised the two-day programme beginning on the day. Photo: Star
Staff Correspondent
Strong governance is the key to planned urbanisation in Bangladesh, said urban experts from home and abroad at an international conference in Dhaka yesterday.
“The current governance structure is not conducive for Dhaka to become a liveable metro city,” said Balakrishna Menon Parameswaran, lead urban specialist of the World Bank, adding, “Combination of leadership, planning and investment, and meaningful consultation is required for transforming Dhaka into a liveable city.”
Lack of proper policies or wrong policies or a combination of both was holding back the desired urbanisation in Bangladesh, he said. In an unprecedented event, 20 lakh people moved into Dhaka in the last five years, he said.
The World Bank, Municipality Association of Bangladesh, Institute of Architects Bangladesh, Bangladesh Institute of Planners, and Institute of Engineers Bangladesh jointly organised the two-day conference on “Cities Forum: Building Knowledge Networks and Partnerships for Sustainable Urban Development in Bangladesh” at the Dhaka Sonargaon Hotel.
Balakrishna underscored the need for empowering the elected city mayors.
“Strong urban governance is what we need,” said Rene Holenstein, the Swiss ambassador to Bangladesh.
Qimiao Fan, World Bank country director, said only well-managed urbanisation could lead to sustainable economic growth, allowing productivity and innovations.
In recent years, Bangladesh has experienced an annual urbanisation growth of 3.3 percent with 5.4 crore people living in the urban centres and the number is predicted to double in the next three decades or so, he said.
Urban areas contribute 60 percent of the country's GDP, and Dhaka and Chittagong together share 47 percent of the total output, Fan said.
This urbanisation is expanding job and manufacturing opportunities, he said, adding that more work was needed to fully capture the enormous benefits of urbanisation.
Bangladesh needs to address the critical challenges brought about by the massive unplanned urbanisation, characterised by high-level poverty, and generally poor housing conditions and liveability.
More than one out of five urban dwellers in Bangladesh lives in poverty, Fan said.
According to Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, nearly 62 percent of the urban population, which is about 3 crore people, currently live in informal settlements and slums.
The country's urban centres need a minimum of $2 billion annual investment for basic infrastructure, such as roads, water and sanitation, to meet the demand of the rapidly growing urban population, Fan said.
In Bangladesh, only three percent of the total public expenditure is on urban infrastructure development, which is very low by global standards. Bhutan spends 16 percent, Nepal 10, Indonesia 34 and South Africa 52 percent, he said.
Dhaka South City Corporation Mayor Mohammad Sayeed Khokon said lack of adequate urban planning has led to today's civic woes, traffic congestion and flooding.
Narayanganj City Corporation Mayor Salina Hayat Ivy said there had always been an effort to keep the local government institutions submissive.
“We as the elected mayors cannot exercise the power provided by the present law and cannot play our mandated roles,” she said.
Different municipalities have different problems and the government needs to address them separately, she said.
Md Akter Mahmud, a professor at the department of urban and regional planning of Jahangirnagar University, pointed out several challenges in urban planning in Bangladesh.
He said Dhaka became the centre of politics, employment, amenities and facilities. “Every year 100,000 people are being added to existing population,” he said, adding that 41 percent of total urban population live in Dhaka.
“Local bodies are not equipped or do not have the technical and financial strength. They also do not have the visionary leadership,” he said suggesting that mayors of municipalities increase income generation capabilities instead of depending on funding from donor agencies and the government.
Akter said every year the country loses one percent of arable land due to unplanned urbanisation.
Robert Cervero, a professor at the department of city and regional planning of the University of California, urged focusing on Dhaka's transportation problems.
He said, “Yes, we need flyovers but there has to be other facilities and strategies to address the city's transportation problems.”
He emphasised the need for introducing mass transportation facilities to curb traffic congestion.
Ralph Becker, former mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah, said galvanising collaboration among all stakeholders with a common goal of public good is what a mayor could facilitate.
Chief guest Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury said a comprehensive approach of professional groups and experts was needed to address the complex urbanisation issue.
Md Abdul Baten, president of Municipal Association of Bangladesh, chaired the inaugural session in which 300 mayors, councillors and urban practitioners took part.
Mel Senen S Sarmiento, who had been the mayor Calbayog city of the Philippines for nine years, also spoke on the occasion.
http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/get-good-governance-1483120
Banglar Bir
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2006
- Messages
- 7,805
- Reaction score
- -3
- Country
- Location
Time to act on Dhaka city
Salma Khan
Update: 17:57, Oct 29, 2017
It has long been acknowledged that the capital city Dhaka is hardly livable. Any adverse happening in the country has a serious impact on Dhaka.
According to a survey of the Intelligence Unit of The Economist, Dhaka is the third most unlivable city in the world.
In context of insecurity for women and also sexual violence against women, Dhaka is in fourth position. Dhaka is also has a high level of physical and mental stress.
According to a survey of health journal Lancet, Bangladesh tops the list of deaths for environmental cause.
In different indexes of living standards, Dhaka is steadily deteriorates.
In this backdrop, Prothom Alo in its editorial had asked, "When will those concerned wake up and act?”
The government hopes to become a middle income country by 2030 through the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). UK-based research centre PWC predicts that this is possible as the GDP growth rate is consistently upward in our country in comparison to other developing countries. So why is the capital of this country in such a bad shape?
Villages were at the heart of development in the nineties. Given the indicators of social development including reduction of poverty, child and mother mortality and population at the village level, Bangladesh became a role model of development.
Dhaka became the centre of development. The government and the private sector mostly invested in Dhaka. As a result, people from different districts moved to Dhaka in search of employment, education and health services.
Although there are district-wise projects under different ministries, they are not properly implemented. As a result, the pressure ultimately falls on the infrastructure and civic amenities of Dhaka.
Such extreme pressure leads to unplanned expansion, grabbing, violence, accidents, stealing, robbery, snatching and mismanagement in traffic system.
All this contributes to serious traffic congestion in Dhaka.
Women's insecurity is also increasing.
Dhaka is a mega city due to increased population and high demand for a life standard. It is not surprising that Dhaka is low on the list of livable cities.
The government and the residents of Dhaka have to properly act. It is the responsibility of all to turn our beloved Dhaka into a livable city. The local government, the deputy commissioner, the mayors, and the law enforcing agencies have to play a key role.
Quality education and employment opportunities for young people have to be created outside Dhaka if the pressure on Dhaka is to reduce. According to UNICEF, 7,100,000 youths aged between 15 and 17 are outside of the education system. In order to create employment for them at a local level, they have to be provided education, especially technical education at a district level. The education ministry and the health ministry have to allocate funds accordingly.
The huge number of vehicles is not the main cause of traffic congestion in Dhaka. It is violation of the traffic rules that mainly causes traffic congestion. The traffic rules should be enforced strictly. Due to violation of traffic rules, Bangladesh is on top of the list when it comes to road accidents.
In mega cities like Singapore and Jakarta, vehicles are controlled strictly. In Jakarta, every car has to have at least three passengers or they have to buy tokens.
In Singapore, cars with even numbered licence plates move one day and odd number cars on the alternate days. Otherwise, they have to pay extra.
Emphasis has to be given on education, health and employment to turn Dhaka into a livable city. Education and health services have to be expanded.
Employment opportunities have to be decentralised.
In the eighties of last century, the government declared that some special ministries and departments would be shifted outside Dhaka.
These were the shipping ministry, the railway ministry, and the labour and employment ministry.
Still such steps can be taken so that development takes place in other areas of the country and young entrepreneurship is created.
Dhaka will have to be turned into an able mega city to provide all sorts of social, economic and civic amenities as we achieved independent Bangladesh at the sacrifice of three million people. Dhaka will be number one on the list of livable cities. For this, all concerned have to act now.
Salma Khan is an economist and women’s leader.
*This piece, originally published in Prothom Alo print edition, has been rewritten in English by Rabiul Islam.
http://en.prothom-alo.com/opinion/news/164737/Time-to-act-on-Dhaka-city
Salma Khan
Update: 17:57, Oct 29, 2017
It has long been acknowledged that the capital city Dhaka is hardly livable. Any adverse happening in the country has a serious impact on Dhaka.
According to a survey of the Intelligence Unit of The Economist, Dhaka is the third most unlivable city in the world.
In context of insecurity for women and also sexual violence against women, Dhaka is in fourth position. Dhaka is also has a high level of physical and mental stress.
According to a survey of health journal Lancet, Bangladesh tops the list of deaths for environmental cause.
In different indexes of living standards, Dhaka is steadily deteriorates.
In this backdrop, Prothom Alo in its editorial had asked, "When will those concerned wake up and act?”
The government hopes to become a middle income country by 2030 through the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). UK-based research centre PWC predicts that this is possible as the GDP growth rate is consistently upward in our country in comparison to other developing countries. So why is the capital of this country in such a bad shape?
Villages were at the heart of development in the nineties. Given the indicators of social development including reduction of poverty, child and mother mortality and population at the village level, Bangladesh became a role model of development.
Dhaka became the centre of development. The government and the private sector mostly invested in Dhaka. As a result, people from different districts moved to Dhaka in search of employment, education and health services.
Although there are district-wise projects under different ministries, they are not properly implemented. As a result, the pressure ultimately falls on the infrastructure and civic amenities of Dhaka.
Such extreme pressure leads to unplanned expansion, grabbing, violence, accidents, stealing, robbery, snatching and mismanagement in traffic system.
All this contributes to serious traffic congestion in Dhaka.
Women's insecurity is also increasing.
Dhaka is a mega city due to increased population and high demand for a life standard. It is not surprising that Dhaka is low on the list of livable cities.
The government and the residents of Dhaka have to properly act. It is the responsibility of all to turn our beloved Dhaka into a livable city. The local government, the deputy commissioner, the mayors, and the law enforcing agencies have to play a key role.
Quality education and employment opportunities for young people have to be created outside Dhaka if the pressure on Dhaka is to reduce. According to UNICEF, 7,100,000 youths aged between 15 and 17 are outside of the education system. In order to create employment for them at a local level, they have to be provided education, especially technical education at a district level. The education ministry and the health ministry have to allocate funds accordingly.
The huge number of vehicles is not the main cause of traffic congestion in Dhaka. It is violation of the traffic rules that mainly causes traffic congestion. The traffic rules should be enforced strictly. Due to violation of traffic rules, Bangladesh is on top of the list when it comes to road accidents.
In mega cities like Singapore and Jakarta, vehicles are controlled strictly. In Jakarta, every car has to have at least three passengers or they have to buy tokens.
In Singapore, cars with even numbered licence plates move one day and odd number cars on the alternate days. Otherwise, they have to pay extra.
Emphasis has to be given on education, health and employment to turn Dhaka into a livable city. Education and health services have to be expanded.
Employment opportunities have to be decentralised.
In the eighties of last century, the government declared that some special ministries and departments would be shifted outside Dhaka.
These were the shipping ministry, the railway ministry, and the labour and employment ministry.
Still such steps can be taken so that development takes place in other areas of the country and young entrepreneurship is created.
Dhaka will have to be turned into an able mega city to provide all sorts of social, economic and civic amenities as we achieved independent Bangladesh at the sacrifice of three million people. Dhaka will be number one on the list of livable cities. For this, all concerned have to act now.
Salma Khan is an economist and women’s leader.
*This piece, originally published in Prothom Alo print edition, has been rewritten in English by Rabiul Islam.
http://en.prothom-alo.com/opinion/news/164737/Time-to-act-on-Dhaka-city
Banglar Bir
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2006
- Messages
- 7,805
- Reaction score
- -3
- Country
- Location
Bangladesh’s urban underbelly a cause for concern
Abu Siddique
Published at 05:22 PM October 30, 2017
Last updated at 12:52 AM October 31, 2017
Garbage floats on the Rayerbazar canal just outside the Rayerbazar slum in Dhaka
Mahmud Hossain Opu/Dhaka Tribune
About 2.2 million people live in the nation's urban slums as squatters and floating population. This is the first of a three-part series in which the Dhaka Tribune's Abu Siddique explores the rights of slum dwellers, their access to the safety net and basic civic services such as healthcare and sanitation
With a population of 160 million, Bangladesh is gradually moving towards middle-income status with many people’s fortunes rising because of trade and industrial activity in cities like Dhaka and Chittagong.
However, the growth of such urban centres has come at a cost, with urban sprawl and rapid rural-to-urban migration putting a strain on infrastructure and services.
“We are gradually doing a lot of things to improve the conditions in the slums but because the number of people keeps rising every day, it is hard for us to keep up,” Slum Development Officer of Dhaka South City Corporation, A K M Lutfur Rahman, said.
The annual population growth rate recorded in the 2014 Census of Slum Areas and Floating Population was 2.70%. This has created a housing issue where most of the urban poor have ended up living in slums that are not equipped with basic facilities such as safe drinking water, sanitation and healthcare.
“The absence of a coordinating mechanism between the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the Ministry of Local Government is increasing the problem,” said Prof Nazrul Islam, a leading slum specialist.
The 2014 census recorded a rise in the number of slums in Bangladesh from just 2,991 in 1997 to 13,935 slums in 2014.
These were home to 2,232,114 people, or 6.33% of the urban population of the country.
The census found that 52.5% of households in Bangladesh sourced their drinking water from tube wells, while 45.2% of households had tap water.
In city corporation areas of Dhaka, 55.1% of slum dwellers got their drinking water from taps and 42.5% got their drinking water from tube wells.
In stark contrast, 87.6% of slum dwellers in municipal areas got their drinking water from tube wells whereas only 10.3% of households had taps. About 5.7% of slum dwellers sourced their water from ponds or ditches.
“It is very unfortunate that there are still a lot of people who are living without fresh drinking water,” Khairul Islam, country director of WaterAid Bangladesh, said.
House inside the Rayerbazar slum in Dhaka – Mahmud Hossain Opu/Dhaka Tribune
According to the Urban Health Survey 2013, 32.7% of slums under both the city corporation did not have any government facilities available, while 36.9% of the slums were bereft of community health workers.
Additionally, the Demographic Health Survey 2014 found that the urban poor had little access to healthcare in the slums, where the prevalence of family planning and institutional delivery was 54% and 45.5% respectively.
Of the many health indicators, Bangladesh has significantly reduced the child death rate through measures including a countrywide immunisation programme among children.
Slum children also received the polio vaccine during a national programme introduced by the government. However, the percentage of slum children who received polio vaccine was about 94.9%, compared to universal coverage nationwide.
Brig Gen Md Zakir Hassan, chief health officer of Dhaka North City Corporation, said ignorance is the reason why slum dwellers do not pay much heed to their health workers.
“It often seems as though healthcare officials had to motivate parents to immunise their children or get a checkup when they had a cold,” he said.
The prevalence of latrine facilities is treated as a substantive indicator of a healthy and hygienic environment. Data from the 2014 slum census showed that 42.2% of households used a pit for a latrine, followed by 26.2% using sanitary latrines.
Tin latrines were used by 21.1%, hanging/kutcha by 8.6%, and open spaces by 1.8% on a national level.
In city corporation areas, 42.5% of households used pit latrines, followed by 26% using sanitary (water sealed) latrines. Tin latrines were used by 23.6% of households, hanging/kutcha by 6.8%, and open spaces by 1.8% of households.
In municipal areas, 41.8% of slum dwellers used pit latrines and 28.9% used sanitary latrines, while 14.8% used hanging/kutcha latrines, 10.4% tin latrines, and 4.2% open spaces.
According to the 2014 slum census, the total number of household enumerated was 594,861, of which 431,756 were in the city corporation areas, 130,145 were in municipal areas and 32,960 were in other urban areas. The average household size is 3.75.
http://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/2017/10/30/bangladeshs-urban-underbelly-cause-concern/
Abu Siddique
Published at 05:22 PM October 30, 2017
Last updated at 12:52 AM October 31, 2017
Garbage floats on the Rayerbazar canal just outside the Rayerbazar slum in Dhaka
Mahmud Hossain Opu/Dhaka Tribune
About 2.2 million people live in the nation's urban slums as squatters and floating population. This is the first of a three-part series in which the Dhaka Tribune's Abu Siddique explores the rights of slum dwellers, their access to the safety net and basic civic services such as healthcare and sanitation
With a population of 160 million, Bangladesh is gradually moving towards middle-income status with many people’s fortunes rising because of trade and industrial activity in cities like Dhaka and Chittagong.
However, the growth of such urban centres has come at a cost, with urban sprawl and rapid rural-to-urban migration putting a strain on infrastructure and services.
“We are gradually doing a lot of things to improve the conditions in the slums but because the number of people keeps rising every day, it is hard for us to keep up,” Slum Development Officer of Dhaka South City Corporation, A K M Lutfur Rahman, said.
The annual population growth rate recorded in the 2014 Census of Slum Areas and Floating Population was 2.70%. This has created a housing issue where most of the urban poor have ended up living in slums that are not equipped with basic facilities such as safe drinking water, sanitation and healthcare.
“The absence of a coordinating mechanism between the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the Ministry of Local Government is increasing the problem,” said Prof Nazrul Islam, a leading slum specialist.
The 2014 census recorded a rise in the number of slums in Bangladesh from just 2,991 in 1997 to 13,935 slums in 2014.
These were home to 2,232,114 people, or 6.33% of the urban population of the country.
The census found that 52.5% of households in Bangladesh sourced their drinking water from tube wells, while 45.2% of households had tap water.
In city corporation areas of Dhaka, 55.1% of slum dwellers got their drinking water from taps and 42.5% got their drinking water from tube wells.
In stark contrast, 87.6% of slum dwellers in municipal areas got their drinking water from tube wells whereas only 10.3% of households had taps. About 5.7% of slum dwellers sourced their water from ponds or ditches.
“It is very unfortunate that there are still a lot of people who are living without fresh drinking water,” Khairul Islam, country director of WaterAid Bangladesh, said.
House inside the Rayerbazar slum in Dhaka – Mahmud Hossain Opu/Dhaka Tribune
According to the Urban Health Survey 2013, 32.7% of slums under both the city corporation did not have any government facilities available, while 36.9% of the slums were bereft of community health workers.
Additionally, the Demographic Health Survey 2014 found that the urban poor had little access to healthcare in the slums, where the prevalence of family planning and institutional delivery was 54% and 45.5% respectively.
Of the many health indicators, Bangladesh has significantly reduced the child death rate through measures including a countrywide immunisation programme among children.
Slum children also received the polio vaccine during a national programme introduced by the government. However, the percentage of slum children who received polio vaccine was about 94.9%, compared to universal coverage nationwide.
Brig Gen Md Zakir Hassan, chief health officer of Dhaka North City Corporation, said ignorance is the reason why slum dwellers do not pay much heed to their health workers.
“It often seems as though healthcare officials had to motivate parents to immunise their children or get a checkup when they had a cold,” he said.
The prevalence of latrine facilities is treated as a substantive indicator of a healthy and hygienic environment. Data from the 2014 slum census showed that 42.2% of households used a pit for a latrine, followed by 26.2% using sanitary latrines.
Tin latrines were used by 21.1%, hanging/kutcha by 8.6%, and open spaces by 1.8% on a national level.
In city corporation areas, 42.5% of households used pit latrines, followed by 26% using sanitary (water sealed) latrines. Tin latrines were used by 23.6% of households, hanging/kutcha by 6.8%, and open spaces by 1.8% of households.
In municipal areas, 41.8% of slum dwellers used pit latrines and 28.9% used sanitary latrines, while 14.8% used hanging/kutcha latrines, 10.4% tin latrines, and 4.2% open spaces.
According to the 2014 slum census, the total number of household enumerated was 594,861, of which 431,756 were in the city corporation areas, 130,145 were in municipal areas and 32,960 were in other urban areas. The average household size is 3.75.
http://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/2017/10/30/bangladeshs-urban-underbelly-cause-concern/
Banglar Bir
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2006
- Messages
- 7,805
- Reaction score
- -3
- Country
- Location
Urban poor often overlooked for social safety net programme
Abu Siddique
Published at 02:30 AM November 01, 2017
Last updated at 02:33 AM November 01, 2017
File Photo
Of the Old Age Allowance, 94.03% covers the rural poor while only 5.97% goes to the urban poor
Massive imbalances exist in the level of support given to the urban poor and the rural poor under the social safety net programmes (SSNPs) initiated by the government, research by Concern Worldwide Bangladesh has found.
The study showed that among the two major SSNPs – the Old Age Allowance and Widowed and Distressed Women Allowance – there is a vast discrepancy in the distribution of support between the urban poor and the rural poor.
Of the Old Age Allowance, 94.03% covers the rural poor while only 5.97% goes to the urban poor. The Widowed and Distressed Women Allowance is even more lopsided, loaded 98.32% in favour of the rural poor and only 1.68% to the urban poor.
Gazi Mohammad Nurul Kabir, director general of Department of Social services, said the programmes are part designed to reduce the migration of lower income groups to urban areas.
“One of the major intentions of the SSNPs is to provide more support to rural areas (and) that is why the government has been running different programmes as an incentive to have them return to the villages,” he said.
However, the National Social Security Strategy 2015 acknowledges the shortcomings of the safety net programmes and aims to reform the provisions to ensure “more efficient and effective use of resources, strengthened delivery systems and progress towards a more inclusive form of Social Security”.
To give the urban poor as equal access as their rural counterparts, the strategy plans to provide services for the elderly, children, vulnerable women and people with disabilities.
Amela Begum, 50, is originally from Jamalpur but lives in a shanty near Khilgaon flyover and earns Tk2,000 a month working as a maid. Despite living in Dhaka for almost 20 years, she has no idea about the SSNPs that she can access when sick or as a vulnerable woman.
Quazi Shahbuddin, an economist and the former director general of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), told the Dhaka Tribune: “The reason why people still keep migrating to urban areas might have something to do with finding better employment opportunities. As the government’s resources are limited, it has to choose where the support goes first.”
No permanent address? No NID
There are more than 594,861 people living in slums or are homeless according to the Census of Slum Areas and Floating Population 2014, who by the nature of their living situation are unable to get a National Identity Card (NID) or a birth certificate even though these documents have been made mandatory by the government.
The problem is that Dhaka is home to a large number of migrant workers who usually work in the informal sector and move from one job to another very frequently. Their addresses change along with their jobs.
Ultimately, the children of these people are unable to enroll in school as they do have a birth certificate, which also needs a permanent address.
Razia Sultana and her family has been living in Dhaka for 20 years usually in shanties or on the footpaths. She now lives in a shanti in Maniknagar area and because of this, she cannot acquire a NID or get birth certificates for her children.
“For last three years, my husband and I along with our three children have been living here. I tried to enroll my youngest child, Alamin in school but they refused to take him because he does not have a birth certificate,” she told the Dhaka Tribune.
Because she works from down to dusk, she said they had no idea how to even get a NID.
Director of (operations) of National Identity Registration Wing, Abdul Baten said, according to the law, a permanent address is mandatory when applying for a NID. “We cannot help people without a permanent address.”
http://www.dhakatribune.com/banglad...often-overlooked-social-safety-net-programme/
Abu Siddique
Published at 02:30 AM November 01, 2017
Last updated at 02:33 AM November 01, 2017
File Photo
Of the Old Age Allowance, 94.03% covers the rural poor while only 5.97% goes to the urban poor
Massive imbalances exist in the level of support given to the urban poor and the rural poor under the social safety net programmes (SSNPs) initiated by the government, research by Concern Worldwide Bangladesh has found.
The study showed that among the two major SSNPs – the Old Age Allowance and Widowed and Distressed Women Allowance – there is a vast discrepancy in the distribution of support between the urban poor and the rural poor.
Of the Old Age Allowance, 94.03% covers the rural poor while only 5.97% goes to the urban poor. The Widowed and Distressed Women Allowance is even more lopsided, loaded 98.32% in favour of the rural poor and only 1.68% to the urban poor.
Gazi Mohammad Nurul Kabir, director general of Department of Social services, said the programmes are part designed to reduce the migration of lower income groups to urban areas.
“One of the major intentions of the SSNPs is to provide more support to rural areas (and) that is why the government has been running different programmes as an incentive to have them return to the villages,” he said.
However, the National Social Security Strategy 2015 acknowledges the shortcomings of the safety net programmes and aims to reform the provisions to ensure “more efficient and effective use of resources, strengthened delivery systems and progress towards a more inclusive form of Social Security”.
To give the urban poor as equal access as their rural counterparts, the strategy plans to provide services for the elderly, children, vulnerable women and people with disabilities.
Amela Begum, 50, is originally from Jamalpur but lives in a shanty near Khilgaon flyover and earns Tk2,000 a month working as a maid. Despite living in Dhaka for almost 20 years, she has no idea about the SSNPs that she can access when sick or as a vulnerable woman.
Quazi Shahbuddin, an economist and the former director general of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), told the Dhaka Tribune: “The reason why people still keep migrating to urban areas might have something to do with finding better employment opportunities. As the government’s resources are limited, it has to choose where the support goes first.”
No permanent address? No NID
There are more than 594,861 people living in slums or are homeless according to the Census of Slum Areas and Floating Population 2014, who by the nature of their living situation are unable to get a National Identity Card (NID) or a birth certificate even though these documents have been made mandatory by the government.
The problem is that Dhaka is home to a large number of migrant workers who usually work in the informal sector and move from one job to another very frequently. Their addresses change along with their jobs.
Ultimately, the children of these people are unable to enroll in school as they do have a birth certificate, which also needs a permanent address.
Razia Sultana and her family has been living in Dhaka for 20 years usually in shanties or on the footpaths. She now lives in a shanti in Maniknagar area and because of this, she cannot acquire a NID or get birth certificates for her children.
“For last three years, my husband and I along with our three children have been living here. I tried to enroll my youngest child, Alamin in school but they refused to take him because he does not have a birth certificate,” she told the Dhaka Tribune.
Because she works from down to dusk, she said they had no idea how to even get a NID.
Director of (operations) of National Identity Registration Wing, Abdul Baten said, according to the law, a permanent address is mandatory when applying for a NID. “We cannot help people without a permanent address.”
http://www.dhakatribune.com/banglad...often-overlooked-social-safety-net-programme/
Banglar Bir
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2006
- Messages
- 7,805
- Reaction score
- -3
- Country
- Location
12:00 AM, October 30, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 01:25 PM, October 30, 2017
WORLD CITIES DAY
The death and life of great global cities
Illustration: Ehsanur Raza Ronny
Adnan Morshed
As his airplane approached the sprawling international airport in Mymensingh, the capital of the South Asian country of Bangladesh, Kareem Sebastian surveyed the deltaic Bengal geography below and wondered about what was going on during the final years of the country's lost megapolis Dhaka. Located to the south of the current capital, this once-upon-a-time-city occupied more or less the epicentre of an intricate riverine system. It was a sunny October morning with great visibility, allowing him a clear view of a vast urban ruin. The year was 2044.
Was there a Pompeii moment for Dhaka or was it a slow disintegration? An urban anthropologist and a professor at Harvard, Kareem Sebastian was commissioned by the New York Global newspaper to retrace the triumphant and tragic histories of two South Asian cities: Mohenjo-daro and Dhaka.
The goal was to shed some new light on why and how cities rise and fall. The occasion for Sebastian's assignment was the World Cities Day, established over three decades ago on October 27, 2013, by the United Nations General Assembly, with the mission of raising international community's awareness of cities as an effective platform for good governance, social inclusion and interaction, environmental stewardship, and sustainable economic development.
"Well, listening to you I can visualise the urban politics of Dhaka during its final years. As one would imagine, a city thrives when it treats all its citizens fairly. It is not just the individual's material prosperity, but the social advancement of the larger community that the city needs.
Since 2013, the United Nations has designated October 31 as the World Cities Day. Each year, the day is celebrated on the basis of a given theme. For example, the theme for 2016 was “Inclusive Cities, Shared Development” and, for 2017, it was “Innovative Governance, Open Cities.”
The impetus for establishing the World Cities Day is understandable. The year 2007 witnessed a major demographic milestone in human history. That year the earth's urban population crossed the 50 percent threshold and the “Urban Millennium” in human history began.
The end of the last millennium was marked by a rapidly urbanising world and a corresponding surge in global urban population, which rose from 13 percent (220 million) in 1900 to 29 percent (732 million) in 1950 to 51.3 percent (3.5 billion) in 2010. According to some estimates, 75 percent of humanity, that is over 6 billion people, will be living in cities and towns by 2050.
Designating a World Cities Day in 2013 not only made sense, but was also necessary. While cities could be a great economic boon and provide greater access to opportunities, cities—if not planned and managed with effective environmental policies and a sense of social justice—could also be a devastating threat to human existence. The historic relationship between the concept of civitas (a popular Latin term during the Roman Empire, denoting a social body of citizens) and the resilience of the city needed to be reimagined at the beginning of the Urban Millennium.
Sebastian understood his South Asian assignment in the political context of the emerging Urban Millennium. His mission was to compare and contrast the rise and fall of two cities: one on the bank of the Indus River, well known for its spectacular development as one of the first cities in human history over four millennia ago, and the other on the bank of Buriganga River, known during its heyday as the densest city in the world. Even though the two cities represent two radically different historic eras, they are linked by the common theme of water management as the very basis of their existence. Sebastian was asked by the editors of the New York Global to reflect on the promises and perils of 21st-century urbanisation by learning the lessons of history.
His experience in Mohenjo-daro, the 4500-year-old Indus Valley city located on high grounds in the modern-day Larkana district of Sindh province in Pakistan, was intriguing. Not known to modern archaeologists until the 1920s, the city profited from the fertile lands of the Indus River floodplain and the hydraulic knowledge of the mysterious Indus Valley people. In an ancient form of “globalisation,” the people of Mohenjo-daro traded with the civilisations of Mesopotamia, going north-west by both land and sea routes.
View of Mohenjo-daro's Great Bath, showing the surrounding urban layout.
As he walked inside the archaeological sites of Mohenjo-daro, Sebastian grasped the urban nature of the city. He had studied its glorious history, dramatised by a Bollywood film in 2016. During its peak from about 2500 to 1900 BCE, Mohenjo-daro, spreading out over 250 acres on elevated grounds, was one of the largest and most prosperous among the cities of early civilisations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China. It was not a city of kings, queens or high priests, as no trace of any major citadel, palace or temple has been found.
As Sebastian strolled around the city's central focus, the Great Bath, a massive community pool, Mohenjo-daro's forte in urban water management became clear to him. The city's hydraulic engineering—from over 700 cylindrical wells serving water to urban households to elaborate water delivery and sewage systems by means of brick pipes—was the most advanced at the time.
The city's planners and engineers were experts at harnessing the river water not only for irrigation agriculture, but also for everyday use by means of an elaborate distribution system built under brick platforms and orthogonal urban streets. The hydraulic management system suggested that the city's administrators were more intent on serving the city people on an egalitarian basis rather than creating monumental, politically convenient architecture to glorify a ruling elite.
Why Mohenjo-daro perished sometime around 1800 BCE remains a mystery. No one knows for sure. While he learned a lot from his visit, Sebastian left Pakistan with an array of unanswered or unanswerable questions. And, that is the mystery of the city.
Three days after he arrived in Mymensingh, Sebastian took a road trip to the ruins of Dhaka. Guided by a local urban planner and historian named Rimon Haider, he first went to Old Dhaka, most of which now rots under Buriganga's contaminated water.
He asked his guide, “What happened?”
Haider sighed, “Well, despite the then Prime Minister's sincere directives, the political and business mafia kept on encroaching on the Buriganga River to build their factories, warehouses, residential complexes, and markets.
Narrowed each year, the river could carry less and less water. This happened to other rivers surrounding Dhaka and beyond. The Bengal delta's natural and necessary water drainage system was drastically reduced. Rivers started dying but the monsoon water kept rushing down from the Himalayan plateau. Then there was another problem. Despite a national ban on dumping untreated industrial effluent into the river, the industrialists and their cohorts hardly felt any ethical qualms about treating the rivers as drains. The city's destruction was a matter of time.”
"Weren't there any environmental laws?"
"There were, but most people didn't care about laws or the environment. People broke the law with impunity. There was this corrosive culture of illegal wealth accumulation at any cost. The environment suffered irreparably."
"What about architects and planners? What were they doing?"
"Well, their feeble environmental activism was often sentimental, sporadic, and not research-based. Their half-hearted activism was not enough to save the city and its environment. Besides, architects knowingly and unknowingly played along the dominant official development narrative that took precedence over the natural environment. I suspect that their professional education did not prepare them adequately to be self-critical citizens. There was a glaring hole in pedagogy."
"Who framed the country's mainstream development narrative? Where were such global actors as the World Bank in this narrative?"
"Well, the big guys of the World Bank often flew in and saw the city mostly as a huge market. How would urbanisation increase economic productivity?
The World Bank's 2017 Dhaka East vision was the epitome of anti-environment, neoliberal urban policies that have largely been rejected in the developed world. The Bank wouldn't dare present such ideas to cities like London, Paris, New York or Vienna. Why were they experimenting with pro-market, pro-elite urban policies in developing countries? Because they could, without much local intellectual, research-based resistance. While New York City was increasingly pedestrianising city streets to recreate a people-centric city and Copenhagen was envisioning a city core completely devoid of cars, the World Bank gurus were lamenting the loss of vehicular speed in Dhaka. Their planning vision revolved around mega infrastructure projects, blatantly denying the interests of the majority of urban dwellers."
"My research tells me that Dhaka's traffic congestion was so notorious that the city's annual loss due to traffic jam was nearly USD 4 billion! Was the World Bank wrong to promote infrastructures like flyovers?"
"The World Bank mostly sold an elitist vision of the city, one in which pro-market social mobility was the key mantra. That vision hardly benefited the 85 percent of daily commuters, who used rickety, congested public transportation or walked to work. Instead of focusing on reducing the public demand for cars, they wanted to make the car supply chain more efficient. In other words, there was a rising middle class and make personal automobiles affordable for them and provide them with more four-lane highways, flyovers, and gated communities along the river."
Aerial view of Dhaka in 2017. Photo: Adnan Morshed
"So, what did it all mean?"
"Buy more cars and consume more gas and be proud members of an uber-consumerist society. It was a mercantile vision that was also hyped up by the country's bureaucratic regime. Why didn't the World Bank invest in a robust footpath plan across the country and bike-sharing programmes? Alas, these zero-carbon developments were not market-friendly. They make urban dwellers healthier but don't necessarily advance market interests."
As they trekked the ruinous streets of this ghost city in their Jeep, Sebastian and Haider reached where Dhaka's Karail slum used to be. They paused for some time to visualise what was going on in this part of the city.
Sebastian asked, “How did the ruling class frame the development narrative?”
Haider was on target. “The ruling elite was interested in the city's symbol-centric and GDP-centric development.
Development was viewed exclusively as a challenge of economic growth.
The ideas of social justice and equality were often left out of the development discourse.
The economic growth didn't trickle down to the bottom of the food chain, inevitably spawning crime-prone and malnourished low-income communities.
There was a lot of buzz about slum improvement, but the poor was seen as sub-human and dispensable Other.
An all-out civil war between haves and have-nots became ominously real.”
"Yes, in An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions—published in the same year that the World Cities Day was established—the economists Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen talked about how a country couldn't expect to move forward simply riding on a glitzy consumerist economy, while the lowest rungs of society didn't have access to quality healthcare, education, and other basic needs. A good city must offer a sense of social justice not only through its public and private institutions, but also through its spatial and urban organisation.
One can't ghettoise the poor with very few opportunities available to them and expect to become a liveable, humane city. Aesthetic gymnastics alone won't do it. A few very modern-looking buildings and wavy concrete bridges over lakes don't make a city great. Was this the feeling one would get on the streets of Dhaka then?"
"You could argue that. Dhaka was frequently decorated with flyovers, expensive roadside beautification projects including bonsai galleries, and water fountains, while ordinary city people struggled hard to eke out a minimal existence.
There was a lot of anger on the street.
There was no basic sense of fairness in society.
Anarchy and debauchery ate away the soul of the society."
"Well, listening to you I can visualise the urban politics of Dhaka during its final years. As one would imagine, a city thrives when it treats all its citizens fairly. It is not just the individual's material prosperity, but the social advancement of the larger community that the city needs. Greek thinkers called it the health of the Koinonia, or community.
A city becomes liveable when all its citizens share a common vision of peaceful coexistence.
This vision slowly but steadily transforms into a social contract that all citizens learn to abide by.
Over two millennia ago Aristotle compared the city, the polis, with a ship and the duty of all city people was to assure 'the preservation of the ship in its voyage.'"
"Yes, I was trying to bring up the issue of fairness in our conversation.
Consider Purbachal, a 6000-acre-plus floodplain on the eastern frontier of Dhaka, transformed into a mammoth real-estate development that only the rich could afford.
Many members of the wealthy class brought investment properties there, meaning that the plot they purchased would not be used for their primary homes. Not only did Purbachal not meet the city's vast housing needs, but it also contributed to the city's paralysing waterlogging problems. Because its fancy single-family plots sat squarely on an intricate network of natural drains. Even moderate rain began to flood city streets. Water-borne diseases began to spread. Real-estate developments like Purbachal mushroomed all across the city, causing irredeemable damage to the hydro-geography of the city."
"So, what was the general mood like in the city then?"
"Well, Dhaka was a primate city, meaning that it was disproportionately larger than other cities in the country.
Impoverished people from rural hinterlands kept on flocking to the capital in search of better lives.
There was a lot of buzz about decentralisation among the policymakers, but Dhaka kept on growing in all directions, shouldering an unsustainable national burden.
Its national GDP share was nearly 40 percent around 2015.
By 2030, Dhaka had nearly 40 million people within its metropolitan area, the densest concentration of humanity on the face of the earth. The impossible equation of a lot of needy people and limited resources gave rise to a stressed-out, burnt-out society."
"A collective neurosis of society?"
"Yes, a study undertaken by Zipjet sometime around 2017 revealed that most Asian cities were stressful places to live in.
The study ranked cities' stress level based on 'air pollution, gender equality, unemployment, mental health and even the amount of sun that a city gets.' In that study, Dhaka ranked the seventh most stressed city in the world.
With a global ranking of 144, Dhaka's social stress level was skyrocketing.
Densely populated and having the worst traffic congestion in the world, the city's mental and physical health was on the verge of collapse.
Yes, there were a few pockets of magic in the city—Louis Kahn's parliament complex, wooded areas on the Dhaka University campus, many cool eateries here and there, some art galleries and museums, and a burgeoning café culture.
But the city's infernal, unmanaged growth, combined with the city administration's inability to understand what a city is and should be, as well as the city people's general apathy toward their city, led to a point of no return."
"So, what happened to Dhaka at the end?"
"Well, no one knows for sure.
Was it like Mohenjo-daro?
I don't know. Historians offered a host of possible reasons for the demise of the Indus Valley civilisation. Such as: the Indus River drastically changed its course; Aryans invaded the Indus region and destroyed the settlements; dissatisfaction brought on by a change of climate; the exhaustion of timber resources in the mass production of baked bricks; the salting of arable soil by floods and irrigation; and the Indus Valley population civilisation reached its uttermost economic limit."
"So, do you think Dhaka will rise again one day?"
May be.
Sebastian and Haider called it a day and prepared to return to Mymensingh.
Adnan Morshed, PhD, is an architect, architectural historian, and urbanist, and currently serving as Chairperson of the Department of Architecture at BRAC University. He is the author of Impossible Heights: Skyscrapers, Flight, and the Master Builder (2015) and Oculus: A Decade of Insights in Bangladeshi Affairs (2012). He can be reached at amorshed@bracu.ac.bd.
http://www.thedailystar.net/in-focus/the-death-and-life-great-global-cities-1483486
WORLD CITIES DAY
The death and life of great global cities
Illustration: Ehsanur Raza Ronny
Adnan Morshed
As his airplane approached the sprawling international airport in Mymensingh, the capital of the South Asian country of Bangladesh, Kareem Sebastian surveyed the deltaic Bengal geography below and wondered about what was going on during the final years of the country's lost megapolis Dhaka. Located to the south of the current capital, this once-upon-a-time-city occupied more or less the epicentre of an intricate riverine system. It was a sunny October morning with great visibility, allowing him a clear view of a vast urban ruin. The year was 2044.
Was there a Pompeii moment for Dhaka or was it a slow disintegration? An urban anthropologist and a professor at Harvard, Kareem Sebastian was commissioned by the New York Global newspaper to retrace the triumphant and tragic histories of two South Asian cities: Mohenjo-daro and Dhaka.
The goal was to shed some new light on why and how cities rise and fall. The occasion for Sebastian's assignment was the World Cities Day, established over three decades ago on October 27, 2013, by the United Nations General Assembly, with the mission of raising international community's awareness of cities as an effective platform for good governance, social inclusion and interaction, environmental stewardship, and sustainable economic development.
"Well, listening to you I can visualise the urban politics of Dhaka during its final years. As one would imagine, a city thrives when it treats all its citizens fairly. It is not just the individual's material prosperity, but the social advancement of the larger community that the city needs.
Since 2013, the United Nations has designated October 31 as the World Cities Day. Each year, the day is celebrated on the basis of a given theme. For example, the theme for 2016 was “Inclusive Cities, Shared Development” and, for 2017, it was “Innovative Governance, Open Cities.”
The impetus for establishing the World Cities Day is understandable. The year 2007 witnessed a major demographic milestone in human history. That year the earth's urban population crossed the 50 percent threshold and the “Urban Millennium” in human history began.
The end of the last millennium was marked by a rapidly urbanising world and a corresponding surge in global urban population, which rose from 13 percent (220 million) in 1900 to 29 percent (732 million) in 1950 to 51.3 percent (3.5 billion) in 2010. According to some estimates, 75 percent of humanity, that is over 6 billion people, will be living in cities and towns by 2050.
Designating a World Cities Day in 2013 not only made sense, but was also necessary. While cities could be a great economic boon and provide greater access to opportunities, cities—if not planned and managed with effective environmental policies and a sense of social justice—could also be a devastating threat to human existence. The historic relationship between the concept of civitas (a popular Latin term during the Roman Empire, denoting a social body of citizens) and the resilience of the city needed to be reimagined at the beginning of the Urban Millennium.
Sebastian understood his South Asian assignment in the political context of the emerging Urban Millennium. His mission was to compare and contrast the rise and fall of two cities: one on the bank of the Indus River, well known for its spectacular development as one of the first cities in human history over four millennia ago, and the other on the bank of Buriganga River, known during its heyday as the densest city in the world. Even though the two cities represent two radically different historic eras, they are linked by the common theme of water management as the very basis of their existence. Sebastian was asked by the editors of the New York Global to reflect on the promises and perils of 21st-century urbanisation by learning the lessons of history.
His experience in Mohenjo-daro, the 4500-year-old Indus Valley city located on high grounds in the modern-day Larkana district of Sindh province in Pakistan, was intriguing. Not known to modern archaeologists until the 1920s, the city profited from the fertile lands of the Indus River floodplain and the hydraulic knowledge of the mysterious Indus Valley people. In an ancient form of “globalisation,” the people of Mohenjo-daro traded with the civilisations of Mesopotamia, going north-west by both land and sea routes.
View of Mohenjo-daro's Great Bath, showing the surrounding urban layout.
As he walked inside the archaeological sites of Mohenjo-daro, Sebastian grasped the urban nature of the city. He had studied its glorious history, dramatised by a Bollywood film in 2016. During its peak from about 2500 to 1900 BCE, Mohenjo-daro, spreading out over 250 acres on elevated grounds, was one of the largest and most prosperous among the cities of early civilisations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China. It was not a city of kings, queens or high priests, as no trace of any major citadel, palace or temple has been found.
As Sebastian strolled around the city's central focus, the Great Bath, a massive community pool, Mohenjo-daro's forte in urban water management became clear to him. The city's hydraulic engineering—from over 700 cylindrical wells serving water to urban households to elaborate water delivery and sewage systems by means of brick pipes—was the most advanced at the time.
The city's planners and engineers were experts at harnessing the river water not only for irrigation agriculture, but also for everyday use by means of an elaborate distribution system built under brick platforms and orthogonal urban streets. The hydraulic management system suggested that the city's administrators were more intent on serving the city people on an egalitarian basis rather than creating monumental, politically convenient architecture to glorify a ruling elite.
Why Mohenjo-daro perished sometime around 1800 BCE remains a mystery. No one knows for sure. While he learned a lot from his visit, Sebastian left Pakistan with an array of unanswered or unanswerable questions. And, that is the mystery of the city.
Three days after he arrived in Mymensingh, Sebastian took a road trip to the ruins of Dhaka. Guided by a local urban planner and historian named Rimon Haider, he first went to Old Dhaka, most of which now rots under Buriganga's contaminated water.
He asked his guide, “What happened?”
Haider sighed, “Well, despite the then Prime Minister's sincere directives, the political and business mafia kept on encroaching on the Buriganga River to build their factories, warehouses, residential complexes, and markets.
Narrowed each year, the river could carry less and less water. This happened to other rivers surrounding Dhaka and beyond. The Bengal delta's natural and necessary water drainage system was drastically reduced. Rivers started dying but the monsoon water kept rushing down from the Himalayan plateau. Then there was another problem. Despite a national ban on dumping untreated industrial effluent into the river, the industrialists and their cohorts hardly felt any ethical qualms about treating the rivers as drains. The city's destruction was a matter of time.”
"Weren't there any environmental laws?"
"There were, but most people didn't care about laws or the environment. People broke the law with impunity. There was this corrosive culture of illegal wealth accumulation at any cost. The environment suffered irreparably."
"What about architects and planners? What were they doing?"
"Well, their feeble environmental activism was often sentimental, sporadic, and not research-based. Their half-hearted activism was not enough to save the city and its environment. Besides, architects knowingly and unknowingly played along the dominant official development narrative that took precedence over the natural environment. I suspect that their professional education did not prepare them adequately to be self-critical citizens. There was a glaring hole in pedagogy."
"Who framed the country's mainstream development narrative? Where were such global actors as the World Bank in this narrative?"
"Well, the big guys of the World Bank often flew in and saw the city mostly as a huge market. How would urbanisation increase economic productivity?
The World Bank's 2017 Dhaka East vision was the epitome of anti-environment, neoliberal urban policies that have largely been rejected in the developed world. The Bank wouldn't dare present such ideas to cities like London, Paris, New York or Vienna. Why were they experimenting with pro-market, pro-elite urban policies in developing countries? Because they could, without much local intellectual, research-based resistance. While New York City was increasingly pedestrianising city streets to recreate a people-centric city and Copenhagen was envisioning a city core completely devoid of cars, the World Bank gurus were lamenting the loss of vehicular speed in Dhaka. Their planning vision revolved around mega infrastructure projects, blatantly denying the interests of the majority of urban dwellers."
"My research tells me that Dhaka's traffic congestion was so notorious that the city's annual loss due to traffic jam was nearly USD 4 billion! Was the World Bank wrong to promote infrastructures like flyovers?"
"The World Bank mostly sold an elitist vision of the city, one in which pro-market social mobility was the key mantra. That vision hardly benefited the 85 percent of daily commuters, who used rickety, congested public transportation or walked to work. Instead of focusing on reducing the public demand for cars, they wanted to make the car supply chain more efficient. In other words, there was a rising middle class and make personal automobiles affordable for them and provide them with more four-lane highways, flyovers, and gated communities along the river."
Aerial view of Dhaka in 2017. Photo: Adnan Morshed
"So, what did it all mean?"
"Buy more cars and consume more gas and be proud members of an uber-consumerist society. It was a mercantile vision that was also hyped up by the country's bureaucratic regime. Why didn't the World Bank invest in a robust footpath plan across the country and bike-sharing programmes? Alas, these zero-carbon developments were not market-friendly. They make urban dwellers healthier but don't necessarily advance market interests."
As they trekked the ruinous streets of this ghost city in their Jeep, Sebastian and Haider reached where Dhaka's Karail slum used to be. They paused for some time to visualise what was going on in this part of the city.
Sebastian asked, “How did the ruling class frame the development narrative?”
Haider was on target. “The ruling elite was interested in the city's symbol-centric and GDP-centric development.
Development was viewed exclusively as a challenge of economic growth.
The ideas of social justice and equality were often left out of the development discourse.
The economic growth didn't trickle down to the bottom of the food chain, inevitably spawning crime-prone and malnourished low-income communities.
There was a lot of buzz about slum improvement, but the poor was seen as sub-human and dispensable Other.
An all-out civil war between haves and have-nots became ominously real.”
"Yes, in An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions—published in the same year that the World Cities Day was established—the economists Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen talked about how a country couldn't expect to move forward simply riding on a glitzy consumerist economy, while the lowest rungs of society didn't have access to quality healthcare, education, and other basic needs. A good city must offer a sense of social justice not only through its public and private institutions, but also through its spatial and urban organisation.
One can't ghettoise the poor with very few opportunities available to them and expect to become a liveable, humane city. Aesthetic gymnastics alone won't do it. A few very modern-looking buildings and wavy concrete bridges over lakes don't make a city great. Was this the feeling one would get on the streets of Dhaka then?"
"You could argue that. Dhaka was frequently decorated with flyovers, expensive roadside beautification projects including bonsai galleries, and water fountains, while ordinary city people struggled hard to eke out a minimal existence.
There was a lot of anger on the street.
There was no basic sense of fairness in society.
Anarchy and debauchery ate away the soul of the society."
"Well, listening to you I can visualise the urban politics of Dhaka during its final years. As one would imagine, a city thrives when it treats all its citizens fairly. It is not just the individual's material prosperity, but the social advancement of the larger community that the city needs. Greek thinkers called it the health of the Koinonia, or community.
A city becomes liveable when all its citizens share a common vision of peaceful coexistence.
This vision slowly but steadily transforms into a social contract that all citizens learn to abide by.
Over two millennia ago Aristotle compared the city, the polis, with a ship and the duty of all city people was to assure 'the preservation of the ship in its voyage.'"
"Yes, I was trying to bring up the issue of fairness in our conversation.
Consider Purbachal, a 6000-acre-plus floodplain on the eastern frontier of Dhaka, transformed into a mammoth real-estate development that only the rich could afford.
Many members of the wealthy class brought investment properties there, meaning that the plot they purchased would not be used for their primary homes. Not only did Purbachal not meet the city's vast housing needs, but it also contributed to the city's paralysing waterlogging problems. Because its fancy single-family plots sat squarely on an intricate network of natural drains. Even moderate rain began to flood city streets. Water-borne diseases began to spread. Real-estate developments like Purbachal mushroomed all across the city, causing irredeemable damage to the hydro-geography of the city."
"So, what was the general mood like in the city then?"
"Well, Dhaka was a primate city, meaning that it was disproportionately larger than other cities in the country.
Impoverished people from rural hinterlands kept on flocking to the capital in search of better lives.
There was a lot of buzz about decentralisation among the policymakers, but Dhaka kept on growing in all directions, shouldering an unsustainable national burden.
Its national GDP share was nearly 40 percent around 2015.
By 2030, Dhaka had nearly 40 million people within its metropolitan area, the densest concentration of humanity on the face of the earth. The impossible equation of a lot of needy people and limited resources gave rise to a stressed-out, burnt-out society."
"A collective neurosis of society?"
"Yes, a study undertaken by Zipjet sometime around 2017 revealed that most Asian cities were stressful places to live in.
The study ranked cities' stress level based on 'air pollution, gender equality, unemployment, mental health and even the amount of sun that a city gets.' In that study, Dhaka ranked the seventh most stressed city in the world.
With a global ranking of 144, Dhaka's social stress level was skyrocketing.
Densely populated and having the worst traffic congestion in the world, the city's mental and physical health was on the verge of collapse.
Yes, there were a few pockets of magic in the city—Louis Kahn's parliament complex, wooded areas on the Dhaka University campus, many cool eateries here and there, some art galleries and museums, and a burgeoning café culture.
But the city's infernal, unmanaged growth, combined with the city administration's inability to understand what a city is and should be, as well as the city people's general apathy toward their city, led to a point of no return."
"So, what happened to Dhaka at the end?"
"Well, no one knows for sure.
Was it like Mohenjo-daro?
I don't know. Historians offered a host of possible reasons for the demise of the Indus Valley civilisation. Such as: the Indus River drastically changed its course; Aryans invaded the Indus region and destroyed the settlements; dissatisfaction brought on by a change of climate; the exhaustion of timber resources in the mass production of baked bricks; the salting of arable soil by floods and irrigation; and the Indus Valley population civilisation reached its uttermost economic limit."
"So, do you think Dhaka will rise again one day?"
May be.
Sebastian and Haider called it a day and prepared to return to Mymensingh.
Adnan Morshed, PhD, is an architect, architectural historian, and urbanist, and currently serving as Chairperson of the Department of Architecture at BRAC University. He is the author of Impossible Heights: Skyscrapers, Flight, and the Master Builder (2015) and Oculus: A Decade of Insights in Bangladeshi Affairs (2012). He can be reached at amorshed@bracu.ac.bd.
http://www.thedailystar.net/in-focus/the-death-and-life-great-global-cities-1483486
Banglar Bir
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2006
- Messages
- 7,805
- Reaction score
- -3
- Country
- Location
2:00 AM, November 11, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 12:30 PM, November 11, 2017
EDITORIAL
Most of city's human waste untreated
Water bodies, public health at grave risk
Photo: Prabir Das
We are shocked to know from a report in this paper that 80 percent of Dhaka city's human waste goes directly into its water bodies, leaving the water contaminated and untreatable. This poses a huge risk to public health (outbreak of serious waterborne diseases) and the environment. What is appalling is why a crucial apparatus as sewage management has not been upgraded to meet the demands of a city growing at such an exponential rate. Dhaka now has around 1.75 crore people and the sewerage authority, Wasa, can treat only 20 percent of the city area.
Can this be an acceptable rate of sewage treatment that leaves unmanaged the remaining 80 percent of waste?
The growth in the city's population and unplanned construction of buildings are an ongoing process so it is hardly news that the original sewage system will not be able to manage the huge increase in solid waste. The recent official letter from a ministry to the LGRD and cooperatives minister says that rivers are being contaminated by septic tanks illegally connected to storm drains and the minister has duly called upon Rajuk (Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha) to ensure that there are proper septic tanks at every house and prevent such connections while issuing building permits.
Why do such instructions need to be given now for what should have been a routine task for Rajuk—to enforce the 1984 building rule that requires every owner to set up septic tanks or soak pits and manage the sewage on their own? Rajuk can fine a violator a minimum of Tk 50,000 and even cancel the building's approval. Yet the law has been shamelessly flouted for decades.
Wasa, Rajuk and the city corporations must immediately start coordinating with each other to make sure that each house has a septic tank or soak pit. Localised treatment plants for cluster neighbourhoods can also be set up to manage the waste. Without immediate steps to enforce building rules and introduce practical, innovative methods of waste management, the city will face a huge public health and environmental disaster.
http://www.thedailystar.net/editorial/most-citys-human-waste-untreated-1489462
EDITORIAL
Most of city's human waste untreated
Water bodies, public health at grave risk
Photo: Prabir Das
We are shocked to know from a report in this paper that 80 percent of Dhaka city's human waste goes directly into its water bodies, leaving the water contaminated and untreatable. This poses a huge risk to public health (outbreak of serious waterborne diseases) and the environment. What is appalling is why a crucial apparatus as sewage management has not been upgraded to meet the demands of a city growing at such an exponential rate. Dhaka now has around 1.75 crore people and the sewerage authority, Wasa, can treat only 20 percent of the city area.
Can this be an acceptable rate of sewage treatment that leaves unmanaged the remaining 80 percent of waste?
The growth in the city's population and unplanned construction of buildings are an ongoing process so it is hardly news that the original sewage system will not be able to manage the huge increase in solid waste. The recent official letter from a ministry to the LGRD and cooperatives minister says that rivers are being contaminated by septic tanks illegally connected to storm drains and the minister has duly called upon Rajuk (Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha) to ensure that there are proper septic tanks at every house and prevent such connections while issuing building permits.
Why do such instructions need to be given now for what should have been a routine task for Rajuk—to enforce the 1984 building rule that requires every owner to set up septic tanks or soak pits and manage the sewage on their own? Rajuk can fine a violator a minimum of Tk 50,000 and even cancel the building's approval. Yet the law has been shamelessly flouted for decades.
Wasa, Rajuk and the city corporations must immediately start coordinating with each other to make sure that each house has a septic tank or soak pit. Localised treatment plants for cluster neighbourhoods can also be set up to manage the waste. Without immediate steps to enforce building rules and introduce practical, innovative methods of waste management, the city will face a huge public health and environmental disaster.
http://www.thedailystar.net/editorial/most-citys-human-waste-untreated-1489462
chatterjee
BANNED
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2017
- Messages
- 209
- Reaction score
- -1
- Country
- Location
Banglar abal eshe thread tar gua mere dilo 
Bilal9
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2014
- Messages
- 26,569
- Reaction score
- 9
- Country
- Location
Banglar abal eshe thread tar gua mere dilo
You have to highlight the negative issues with positive. He's not saying anything we don't know.
If you can't do that - then we will become another delusional country (like the one West of us).
Nilgiri
BANNED
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2015
- Messages
- 24,797
- Reaction score
- 81
- Country
- Location
Quite rich coming from you mr fail:
https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/human-capital-report-2017-bd-did-great.517722/
"In fact India ranks below Bangladesh in Human Capital Index and will continue to do so because of its size and the terrible education and health conditions"---mr fail from one of absolute lowest earning communities in the US
------ and boom just 1 year later karma served cold....like the time frame from tanks rolling into Dhaka after his jamaati elders traitorously chest thumped in 1970.
Homo Sapiens
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2015
- Messages
- 9,641
- Reaction score
- -1
- Country
- Location
He single handedly hijacked the Bangladesh defence section.He has little mental ability to distinguish between fake, conspiracy and propaganda news and genuine and important news.Like many other threads, he also turned this thread into abyss.Thread title was 'urban development in Bangladesh' but he turned it into 'slum poverty in Bangladesh'. He doesn't care if this section lost it's relevance and turn into a joke with so many meaningless, and irrelevant thread.Banglar abal eshe thread tar gua mere dilo
Banglar Bir
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2006
- Messages
- 7,805
- Reaction score
- -3
- Country
- Location
City planners’ confce ends with 7-point declaration
Staff Correspondent | Published: 00:53, Nov 12,2017
Guests are seen at the closing ceremony of UTC Dhaka-2017 organised by Institute of Architects Bangladesh and International Union of Architects in the capital’s Agargaon on Saturday. — New Age photo
A three-day conference of architects and city planners ended in Dhaka on Saturday with a seven-point declaration emphasising district-wise budgets, universal access to infrastructures and services, and sustainable city plan with focus on local context instead of any fixed definition.
World Urban Campaign, an advocacy and partnership platform to raise awareness about urbanisation, and its partners — Institute of Architects Bangladesh (IAB) and International Union of Architects (IUA), organised the conference titled ‘innovation, identity and designing of intermediate cities for the city we need.’
IUA’s representative to UN Habitat Ishtiaque Zahir Titas read out the declaration at the closing ceremony of the Urban Thinkers Campus Dhaka 2017 at the IAB Centre in the capital’s Agargaon.
The declaration includes forming of a local government commission led by elected public representatives to promote good governance and transparency.
It also suggests organisational reformation, decentralisation and opening one stop service centres.
The declaration comes up with schemes to redefine intermediate cities in terms of local climate, identity, perspectives, objectives, connectivity, power, social and cultural context and capacity rather than international definition.
Housing and public works minister Mosharraf Hossain welcomed the initiative and said there were many problems in the implementation process of any development plan in the country.
He pointed out that sewerage and waste management system were two main problems in cities, including Dhaka and Chittagong.
IAB president Kazi Golam Nasir said their aim was to bring all stakeholders under same platform for a compact suggestion for the policy makers and implementing agencies.
IAB vice-president (international relations) Ehsan Khan said their initiative was a part of enhancing sustainable development goals (SDG) set by the UN.
IAB former president Mubasshar Hussain said they tried to find out the solution for building a people-friendly city.
He said architects and planners could made suitable design but implementation depends on the politicians.
He urged the leaders for adapting the suggestions for a better development of the country.
IAB vice-president (national) Jalal Ahmed presented the summery of the sessions held in the three days.
http://www.newagebd.net/article/28195/city-planners-confce-ends-with-7-point-declaration
Staff Correspondent | Published: 00:53, Nov 12,2017
Guests are seen at the closing ceremony of UTC Dhaka-2017 organised by Institute of Architects Bangladesh and International Union of Architects in the capital’s Agargaon on Saturday. — New Age photo
A three-day conference of architects and city planners ended in Dhaka on Saturday with a seven-point declaration emphasising district-wise budgets, universal access to infrastructures and services, and sustainable city plan with focus on local context instead of any fixed definition.
World Urban Campaign, an advocacy and partnership platform to raise awareness about urbanisation, and its partners — Institute of Architects Bangladesh (IAB) and International Union of Architects (IUA), organised the conference titled ‘innovation, identity and designing of intermediate cities for the city we need.’
IUA’s representative to UN Habitat Ishtiaque Zahir Titas read out the declaration at the closing ceremony of the Urban Thinkers Campus Dhaka 2017 at the IAB Centre in the capital’s Agargaon.
The declaration includes forming of a local government commission led by elected public representatives to promote good governance and transparency.
It also suggests organisational reformation, decentralisation and opening one stop service centres.
The declaration comes up with schemes to redefine intermediate cities in terms of local climate, identity, perspectives, objectives, connectivity, power, social and cultural context and capacity rather than international definition.
Housing and public works minister Mosharraf Hossain welcomed the initiative and said there were many problems in the implementation process of any development plan in the country.
He pointed out that sewerage and waste management system were two main problems in cities, including Dhaka and Chittagong.
IAB president Kazi Golam Nasir said their aim was to bring all stakeholders under same platform for a compact suggestion for the policy makers and implementing agencies.
IAB vice-president (international relations) Ehsan Khan said their initiative was a part of enhancing sustainable development goals (SDG) set by the UN.
IAB former president Mubasshar Hussain said they tried to find out the solution for building a people-friendly city.
He said architects and planners could made suitable design but implementation depends on the politicians.
He urged the leaders for adapting the suggestions for a better development of the country.
IAB vice-president (national) Jalal Ahmed presented the summery of the sessions held in the three days.
http://www.newagebd.net/article/28195/city-planners-confce-ends-with-7-point-declaration
I guess you have read other's reaction on your posts here. Can you create a different thread and move your posts elsewhere?2:00 AM, November 11, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 12:30 PM, November 11, 2017
EDITORIAL
Most of city's human waste untreated
Water bodies, public health at grave risk
Photo: Prabir Das
We are shocked to know from a report in this paper that 80 percent of Dhaka city's human waste goes directly into its water bodies, leaving the water contaminated and untreatable. This poses a huge risk to public health (outbreak of serious waterborne diseases) and the environment. What is appalling is why a crucial apparatus as sewage management has not been upgraded to meet the demands of a city growing at such an exponential rate. Dhaka now has around 1.75 crore people and the sewerage authority, Wasa, can treat only 20 percent of the city area.
Can this be an acceptable rate of sewage treatment that leaves unmanaged the remaining 80 percent of waste?
The growth in the city's population and unplanned construction of buildings are an ongoing process so it is hardly news that the original sewage system will not be able to manage the huge increase in solid waste. The recent official letter from a ministry to the LGRD and cooperatives minister says that rivers are being contaminated by septic tanks illegally connected to storm drains and the minister has duly called upon Rajuk (Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha) to ensure that there are proper septic tanks at every house and prevent such connections while issuing building permits.
Why do such instructions need to be given now for what should have been a routine task for Rajuk—to enforce the 1984 building rule that requires every owner to set up septic tanks or soak pits and manage the sewage on their own? Rajuk can fine a violator a minimum of Tk 50,000 and even cancel the building's approval. Yet the law has been shamelessly flouted for decades.
Wasa, Rajuk and the city corporations must immediately start coordinating with each other to make sure that each house has a septic tank or soak pit. Localised treatment plants for cluster neighbourhoods can also be set up to manage the waste. Without immediate steps to enforce building rules and introduce practical, innovative methods of waste management, the city will face a huge public health and environmental disaster.
http://www.thedailystar.net/editorial/most-citys-human-waste-untreated-1489462
Similar threads
