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Dhaka is not a city

Khaleed Ashraf
MY fourteen-year-old nephew was livid when I wrote in a Daily Star article that Dhaka is not a city. When I returned from a short trip to Kathmandu a few days later, he greeted me with some irony, "So, Kathmandu is not a city?" A friend later called in to warn me (I hoped jokingly) that the mayor is looking for me, and that I might consider banishment.
The article in The Daily Star (August 8) was a manifesto of sort, pointing out that Dhaka might be sporting more sparkling buildings and swanky automobiles, and a serious urban hustle and bustle, it is still not a city simply because it is fast losing its civility. A city without its civility is like a human without humanity. The manifesto went ahead to list the things that might be repaired to make Dhaka again a decent and civic place.
While we all love Dhaka city and make no bones about it, and get slighted by the slightest censure, we keep accepting and negotiating every day with increasing signs of the city's deterioration. And all in the name of progress. No city remains fixed in form and function, but at least we must have some sense of where it is going, so we may direct where it can go. It is not easy to do that when we get enamoured by a feeling of progress because of the hustle and bustle, and yet some of the very things that are exhibited as marks of building, progress and development can be the cause of a city's crisis. Such is the nature of the paradox: that we can undo a city by building it.
If piling building after building, next to each other, on top of one another, does not make a city, what does, and what is a city then? Perhaps the meanings of city in different languages might give us some understanding. The term "nagara" has ambivalent meanings. on the one hand, it relates to the urban life, belonging to the town of buildings, etc., and, on the other hand, it describes what is clever and cunning. The "nagarika," for example, is someone adept in the pursuit of "kama" and "artha." Term with the suffix "pur" indicates a fort, while "ganj" a market. None of these terms suggest the idea of a civic polity, the spiritual and ethical
basis of collective living that describes a city.
The term "city" itself derives from "civitas," a Latin word with a cluster of meanings: citizen, civic, and civilization. As the city draws people from various ethnic, racial, and social categories into one space, and becomes a place where differences and complexities occur by definition, the most critical need for a city is a civilized mode for addressing and sorting out differences. It's a place where one may find one's personal and spiritual fulfilment in the company of others, uncoerced, and in the light of human dignity. The ultimate civic place is that ideal cosmopolis that becomes, in the way Jacques Derrida describes it, "a city of refuge,"a place that guarantees any one right of residence and hospitality, and to recreate through work and creative activity a living and durable network of fulfilment.
So how do we know that Dhaka's civility is in crisis? First, there really is no vision for Dhaka, no plan for where we are going. What goes for a master plan are outdated and uninspiring instructions for zoning and building byelaws, even those are now defunct
and useless. Second, the institutions entrusted with the planning and management of Dhaka have proven to be immensely dysfunctional, and rather ironically, aggravated the crisis. Third, Dhaka is a traffic terror. our street manner has become a vivid manifestation of our general urban behaviour: self-centered, undisciplined, and life-threatening to others. Fourth, the state and extent of pollution in the city is nearly apocalyptic, and yet we carry on as if everything is sweet and sparkling. Fifth, open spaces -- urban spaces, water bodies, parks - are the most important ingredients of a city, like lungs to the body, and yet they are vanishing magically in an avalanche of greed and manipulation. Sixth, if the sidewalk is a major mark of a civility of a city revealing what the city patriarchs think about a fundamental human condition - the pedestrian and his humanity -- then Dhaka shows no such conception. Seventh, a city is not a just dreary place for minimal economic sustenance, it should be a site of inspiration catering to the mental well being of its citizens. Why shouldn't such notions as imagination, inspiration, and creativity be enshrined in the byelaws of the Master Plan? Eighth, even if housing defines the fabric of a city, its spatial and social matrix, Dhaka presents no innovative or exemplary models of residential living and mass housing, and no achievement in catering to the actual underprivileged citizenry. Ninth, and I think it is a hugely critical thing: Dhaka is witnessing a fast deterioration of its communities, of its cohesiveness and societal integrity. The idea of a moholla has collapsed, and Dhaka has become a city of fragments, broken down to the individual households living on their plots, in their walled enclaves.
Finally, and it's the most tragic one, people in Dhaka have completely forgotten where they are, that there is a river, and that perhaps Dhaka is like an island framed by three rivers, and that a river was the catalyst for the very birth of the city. A city that forgets its geography and its history is fated to face them again in more tragic ways.
Many a thing rests on making Dhaka a civic place. In the absence of a solid contemporary urban culture, Dhaka remains the sole model, ironically the city par excellence. Every small town, every nook and corner in the country wishes to follow Dhaka in some form or another. While there has been no serious comprehensive plan for Dhaka, there has been no plan whatsoever for other cities and towns. This is quite incredible when you realise that planning is paramount for any country with limited resources or land as ours.
So, is Kathmandu a city? on that, later.
Khaleed Ashraf is an architect currently working in Honolulu, USA.