Missed Opportunities in the Planning of Dhaka
There is plenty to think about Dhaka, specially when stuck in an old bus in some
god-forsaken major street, far from reaching the destination that I was supposed
to have reached more than an hour ago. Snarled traffic has always been the
excuse for showing up anywhere late, but that is getting lame as well. We are
supposed to be the second largest megacity of the world in a decade. The very
thought of it gives me the heebie-jeebies. Imagine the current state of the
mess tenfold, and the desire to migrate to the Australian outback also
increases surreptitiously. This Yankee friend of mine used to tell me that,
when he was posted in Bangkok more than a decade ago, his wife used to carry
food and a portable hospital style urinal for the kids in the car. Apparently,
commuting was hell on earth for him. I dare not invite him to Dhaka for a
visit, I must say.
But wait a second here. I myself was in Bangkok just a last year and situation
seemed heavenly compared to here. Other than the numerous taxis, tuk-tuks, and
the ubiquitous single seater mopeds, it was just sheer pleasure to ride the
sky-train, the tube and even the bus. People still complained and repeatedly
apologized for the so called traffic snarls, but hey, vehicles and people
moved, the roads were clean, and the city seem to be a thriving place for
business, with countless multinationals, manufacturing units, and all the known
global brands of the world. That time in the bus over there, all I could think
of was, if Dhaka was like this….
But again (my apologies for starting yet another paragraph with a 'but'), what
went wrong here, I mean here in Dhaka? If you count total apathy and lack of
foresight and planning, then everything has gone wrong. Whatever development
plans the land companies and the politicians with their lake side plot grabbing
were presented to the 'relevant' authorities, they seem to have been approved.
Dhaka is now a totally linear city, expanding northward, and the major roads
mostly on the north south axis. Try explaining city planning to a resident of
Mirpur or Sahmoli going to Zia International for example. The poor souls has
to travel south, make a detour due to the existing behemoths of the cantonment
and a massive piece of an abandoned real-estate in the form an airport formerly
known as "Tejgaon International', traverse north again and yet another detour
for the sake of yet another cantonment and take the highway to reach Zia
international. Someone is making a road through the Tejgaon airport area to
diverse traffic from the old airport road to Agargaon, but it reminds me of the
childhood adage of putting your right hand behind your head to feed yourself.
Talk of planning follies and being retentive about real-estate instead of the
greater public good. Oh, I forgot, that is a 'western' concept, this greater
public good thinghy. The owners of Rangs Bhaban are rightly asked to vacate
their property for the sake of the public, but people with guns who are meant
for our safety and security are not, apparently for our sake. Hmmmm.
Now, I would like to make a one of my fantasies public. I would like to board a
skyway train of some sort from Zia and get to Motijheel for my appointment in
half an hour, and hopefully that will happen before I die of a ripe old age of
natural causes. And please don't get me started on Motijheel either. One long
street is Motijheel commercial area and the other one is Dilkusha. That's it,
our downtown. Obviously our economy is too tiny to require a proper business
district, right? Looking at that area from Goggle Earth, it is obvious of the
mess that is also a microcosm of greater Dhaka; a hodge-podge of buildings, n
gargantuan area taken up in the form of the secretariat and the various sports
complexes, where you are constantly turning left and right to reach your
desired office building. The 'relevant' people related to planning missed a
great chance of relocating the government's administrative apparatus in a
collective and planned manner to Agargaon, where, again, a hodge-podge of
administrative units are springing up. At this point, I am also trying very
hard not to comment on our performance in the world sports arena and justify
the existence of such monumental open fields that are empty during the day
except for the occasional test matches in the middle of our downtown. I was
taught in urban planning that such places of gathering where thousands
congregate are better located on the outskirts or peripheries of the city, well
linked to the heart of the city, instead of right in the smack of the middle of
a business district. But then I must have been taught wrong.
By the way, does anyone know what 'decentralization' means? Napoleon, two
centuries ago was notorious for centralizing the French bureaucracy.
Therefore, literally, all roads eventually led to Paris. The mess that was
created there took another century to clean up by one Baron Haussmann who had
to take extreme drastic measures to make the city what it is today. These
days, with concepts like 'E-governance', video conferencing, web-based
commerce, and E-money, why are we all running towards Dhaka? Can't some of the
ministries other than home, foreign, finance, defense and establishment, be
dispersed to our neglected divisional towns which then could have acted as a
catalyst for their development into modern attractive urban centres? If a
demand for proper educational and health facilities, entertainment areas, and
functioning living zones are not created from the ground up with some
encouragement from the government, these townships will never be able to take
the loads off Dhaka and stream of migrants will continue to proceed to the
crumbling capital and make the basic demands on its creeping infrastructure.
Another question….does Dhaka have any zoning, either by that name or any other?
I mean, Gulshan is said to be the most prestigious area of Bangladesh, and yet
around its two circles, there are garment factories operating. Any street will
have at least one boutique, a fast food joint, a school, even an university, an
NGO office and if that street is unlucky, hordes of vandalized vehicles duly
deposited by the police after impounding. Dhanmundi is supposedly where the
intellectuals (i.e. 'aatels') and ex-bureaucrats live. Must be true, like
Banani with one of the highest concentrations of universities in the world,
Dhanmundi is the defacto capital of private schools. In the maps, it used to
say 'Dhanmundi Residential Area', now its plain Dhanmundi, where other than the
amenity of being buried, you can be born, get educated, get married in one of
their community halls, get a degree, work in one of its many offices, and die
in one of its clinics. I am surprised the area has not yet declared
independence and started exacting tolls from the outsiders who go there on
their day to day travails.
Whinging aside, recently the Chief Adviser has again asked the 'relevant'
authorities to wave the magic wand and solve the traffic quagmire. Well, the
magic wands are beyond their expiry date and that's why its probably not
working. About to celebrate its 400th anniversary as a capital, now its time
to come out of the cocoon, take some drastic and obviously unpopular steps and
at least start the process of solving the riddle of bringing the city with up
to par to claim its place as an international city. Dear Advisor, please
advice, dear Mayor and Chairman of Rajuk, please wake up, and dear planners,
please make your plan public.
M.K.Aaref, Architect
House 15B, Road 50
Gulshan 2, Dhaka.
883-6349. ext 501
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