The felling of bungalows, the building of
Delwar Hussain, 11 - 10 - 2009
Open Democracy
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/the-felling-of-bungalows-the-building-of-dhaka
Delwar Hussain is a writer on south Asian society, currently completing a doctorate at
(This article was first published on 21 August 2009) 11 - 10 - 2009
The frenetic urban growth of
House 17A on Road 6 in the Banani district of Bangladesh's capital,
The house is occupied by the sprawling
When the
As Diane recalls,
We are sitting at her dining-room table. The walls are adorned with photographs of family members captured during their rites of passage: birthdays, weddings and graduations. The various rooms of the house are the stage-set of these celebratory scenes. Above us, an archaic metal bird cools the room by spinning its noisy wings.
"It was such a nice surprise", Diane laughs, "to find that he had no intention of getting rid of us." But when the tower-block on the right was about to be built she pleaded with the developer to make sure that a gap would be left between their garden wall and the wall of the high-rise, in the hope that a little bit of light might still be able to squeeze itself into the garden. This proved vain. "Then the giant on the left decided to move in and again they did not listen." The trees and plants in the garden did not last long after that, and a once flourishing garden - now overshadowed by structures that are at least five stories taller - is covered in darkness and patches of empty ground in only the dog is at home.
The family and the house nonetheless survived the first-wave building boom. Now, however, time has been called on House 17A; the
Diane is British-Jamaican and her husband American. They have lived in the country for over thirty years, but as foreign nationals are not allowed to own property in
The active forgetting
It is not too difficult then to understand why buildings such as the
All of this takes places in the shadow of the ever-increasing craze of constructing super-sized shopping-malls, temples of consumerism. The profit-margin is considered more important than protecting old things. But there is an equally fundamental factor driving the insatiable need for high-rises and as a consequence, the amorphous development of the city itself.
High rise, low water
Dhaka, confined by the busy
The contemporary morphology of
The city planners have arguably still not woken up to the reality of change in the city's fortunes. Laws and regulations that may exist to shape the new transformations are ineffective and hardly ever enforced. What is worse is that there has never been a comprehensive housing policy that hasn't seen the rich grab yet more land.
The recent "Detailed Area Plan", part of the government's Dhaka Metropolitan Development Plan, has been criticised by its own review board as being "silent on the housing needs for this large number of poor." In
Some wealthy friends tell me with pride and glee that average apartments here and in adjacent Gulshan, Dhanmondi and Banani can cost relatively the same amount as ones in smart parts of
But this, against the conventional wisdom, is not just a case of the already rich getting richer. The new agents of affluence are beneficiaries of "garments money", local slang for a new breed of nouveau riche that has become unimaginably wealthy in the international garments industry. Their excessive consumption habits are driving much of the new development.
By contrast, the majority of Dhakaias live precariously, hand-to-mouth, in foul-smelling, degrading bustess (slums) made of tarpaulin, bamboo and foraged materials. These are located along railway-lines, under flyovers, on pavements and behind mosques. They don't discriminate. The closest most will ever come to the high-consuming aristocracy of privilege is when they work as their maids or babuchis (cooks) or in one of their factories.
If anything, the new housing and other modern buildings have exacerbated existing sores. They are built mostly on reclaimed land, wetlands and flood-plains; so rainwater with nowhere to go during the monsoon season (Dhaka experiences eighty inches of rainfall per year) stagnates on the concrete pavements, ensuring a steady stream of water-born illnesses for the city's poor. Even a government review board has accused many of these developments to be illegal and a major contributor to the city's regular floods and other environmental hazards.
The view from paradise
This dystopia is a far cry from the creation-myth Bangladeshi schoolchildren learn of their capital. The name apparently comes from the Dhak trees that once grew in abundance in the area. The Hindu king Ballal Sen was said to have built a temple dedicated to the goddess Durga in these jungles. He named it Dhakeshwari (hidden goddess), as dhakai also means "to conceal" in Bangla. Today the closest most Dhakaias will come to a tree is in one of the dwindling number of public parks, or near museums - open spaces that are increasingly threatened by property-developers.
Tower-blocks, decorated to resemble stacked wedding-cakes, flourish in the new
Those Dhakaias who can afford to live in these high-rise paradises are obliged to adapt and find new ways of living. The buildings are, for example, so tightly packed that basic necessities such as natural light and ventilation have been done away with. The result is that in most apartments, lightbulbs are kept on throughout the day - that is, when the electricity-supply allows. The lights are needed, for the absence of an organised traffic system creates longer and more uncertain commuter journeys, thus encouraging more and more middle and upper-middle class people to consolidate their living and working areas into one space.
The architect's eye
The greatest area of transformation wrought by the onward rush of urban development in
This kind of living is far from conducive to two-, three-, or even four-bedroom flats. This means that many extended families are forced to choose whether to break up or continue living as they are. Many are opting for the nuclear home, which offers privacy and security, and the chance to escape warring family members. Life in a flat may also be more manageable, and allow membership of a neighbourly community that also offers the possibility of withdrawal.
At the same time, wealthier families have a little more choice, and some move into apartment-blocks with the entire family in tow. So, two brothers and their wives will live in one apartment while the grandparents and the unmarried sister live in another (grandchildren are sent to the grandparents for meals). Individualised cubes have been altered to accommodate the importance of family proximity but also to offer the distance and retreat that so many in this city of millions desire.
MK Aaref is an architect who has been designing hotels, apartments and even (though increasingly rarely) houses in
He believes if there was a national and government-backed conservation trust of the kind that in other countries is vital in preserving historic buildings, then bariwalas would be able to continue living in their houses and earn money from the revenue created from allowing visitors into them. This would act as an incentive to save them from the clutches of eager developers all too willing to knock them down. Otherwise, this "cultural genocide" as he calls it, will continue.
Aaref's home/office in Gulshan is at the end of a narrow leafy driveway, behind metal gates. The elevated four-floor building stands on large pillars, a style attributed to the Chakma tribe who live in Aaref's home district of Chittagong (his are however made out of concrete as opposed to bamboo). The space the uplift has created houses his car, hefty architectural salvage-pieces and more greenery.
There is a power-cut so we take the stairs to the top floor where he and his staff of sixteen work. Paintings by Bengali masters that have been in the family for generations hang next to contemporary prints of Italian buildings from the renaissance period. But the room is dominated by the vistas it offers from floor-to-ceiling windows on all sides. Every one attests to
The view of
Behind another window is a lush roof-terrace - one for each floor. Aaref designed the building himself. "I had to start afresh when I came back to Dhaka after studying architecture in the
This is primarily because it is market-driven. Buildings are built in such a way as to minimise costs whilst maximising profit and space. It is this ethos that is the overwhelming influence in the creation of contemporary buildings in
It didn't have to be this way. After the independence of the country and before the start of the building-boom, Dhaka could have modelled itself on cities such as
"We could have had duplex-style town houses that accommodate the numbers of people wanting to live here, as well as the architecture and the aesthetics to go along with it", Aaref argues. "The old buildings don't need to be torn down. Original structures can be modernised, to adapt to contemporary conditions." Today he is concerned that his own neighbours may want to sell up to a developer. There is much pressure on them to do so. He accepts there is nothing he can do about it. "
Two women
The urban landscape is indeed changing. Cranes, bulldozers and diggers are as ubiquitous as beggars and rickshaws. Sand, stone and bricks are piled up on street corners everywhere, waiting to be put to use. The squatting work-gangs on whose taut ridges of muscle the expanding wealth and development of the city depends are omnipresent.
Amina Begum and Rohima Khanom are two such women who have literally been building
Both Amina and Rohima have worked on construction sites in
Both talk about the pain and sores they have. "It is not easy to sit still for hours under the scorching sun breaking bricks", Amina says matter-of-factly. Men get paid better than women "but there's not much we can do about this", she adds. Increasing pauperisation, rising unemployment, landlessness (where land is concentrated in the hands of a few), river erosion, as well as dreams of a better life mean that Dhaka's numbers continuously swell with new rural migrants. For many of them, the building industry is the easiest way to earn a living as it offers regular work and does not require an education or skills.
Amina is originally from Foridpur, southern
Rohima is from Jamalpur, five hours from
Neither Amina nor Rohima's one-room homes have running water, a toilet, or electricity. They get drinking water from the local mosque and when they need the toilet they go to a woman who allows them to use hers. They bathe and wash their clothes in the park pond. The construction-site they worked on, a hostel for police officers, now overlooks the high walls of
During the eight years that it took to finish the project - government projects are notorious for taking a long time to complete - Rohima gave birth to another child. 7-year-old Laboni, wearing a bright yellow dress and with shiny oiled hair, stands next to us. She has never known anything but this life. From the moment she was born, she lay on Rohima's lap while her mother broke bricks. Later, when she was old enough to toddle, Laboni would help Rohima by fetching bricks for her. She would not get paid as she was considered to be her mother's "helper".
Laboni does not go to school. I ask her what she wants to be when she grows up. She didn't have to think about it. She knew. She wanted to help her mother on the construction-sites. If she could do this, it would make her really happy. I persevered. But if you could do anything you wanted, absolutely anything, what would that be? Laboni says in that case she wants to work in a house as a maid, folding clothes. She and her family are in the business of surviving. This, after all, is
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