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Catalysis for a new Dhaka

Kazi Khaleed Ashraf with Masudul Islam
A city can build itself to death, and that is perhaps the most appropriate description of Dhaka's so-called development.
Dhaka is basically being built/killed in two ways: by developers and builders whose only concern is maximum economic profit and who could care less about spearheading an environmental and social degradation; and by designated policy-makers whose myopic and miserly visions do not go beyond making regulations and land divisions, and hold no answer to the complexity of the urban landscape. But whatever gets built, little or not so little, has an impact. The fact is despite the perception of our economic limitedness, Dhaka is a city of prodigious and furious building activity, and all that impacts the balance of the ecological, social and economic life-system.
The time is ripe for a radical transformation of Dhaka. We know now where the problems are and how acute they are, but the big question is: are we prepared with alternatives? An urban transformation of Dhaka needs to recognize a few key conditions for the city and its regions. The most important is: Dhaka is part of a dynamic hydrological landscape, and for that reason Dhaka should be developed
as a hydrological city. Unless we have evolved into superior dry creatures (and it is only the farmers and fishermen in the delta who are destined to stay wet), we will be retaliated by an unforgiving mother nature in multiple ways. The deluge of the 1980s, the lesser floods each year, the climatic changes, the record rainfall of July 28, 2009, are some of nature's way of saying, 1 shall return. And yet for all that is wrong and all that is calamitous, Dhaka can still be a laboratory for showing a balanced urban dynamic.
I am obsessed by the Google image of Dhaka. The satellite view opens up a whole new realm of geographic imagination revealing things about the city unlike any other medium. I gaze at it endlessly, I scan left and right, zoom in and out, and the city that appears before me never ceases to amaze me. I see a city, or potential of a city, that is largely concealed. Patches and parts of the city appear that is not available from a ground reality, which in turn offer a whole new opportunity for imagining the city's future.
The Google map makes a few things more apparent than other medium for observing and mapping Dhaka: What should be the perimeter of the city? What will happen at that edge? What will happen beyond that edge? What will be the relationship between two sides of the
divide? Dhaka cannot grow infinitely in every other direction, swallowing up wetlands and agricultural land with mind-humbing speed and greed, and throwing off balance a precious ecological and hydrological system. If not, then, how will be the population growth and the appetite for urban land solved?That is the challenge. The brilliance for urban designers and planners will be to show that sustaining and enhancing Dhaka's geographic life system can address growth.
In the meantime, without a vision, Dhaka hobbles and limps in its urban "growth." I have walked the banks of Buriganga and Turag, that is, wherever it is walkable, sailed down and up the rivers, stood amidst the anarchy in Gabtoli and other points on the western embankment, and I looked and looked but nowhere, absolutely nowhere, have I seen any sign of an intelligent, civic or decent treatment of the water's edge. Nowhere did I find an evidence of a language for developing the riverbanks a plan for a spatially efficient and aesthetically organized system and also something that is economically sustainable. 1 have seen garbage and effulgence spewed out, shops and shacks tumbling over each other with their back to the river, grownup men standingand urinating into it, but no sign of a design intelligence. And to
think we are a peopje of land and water, and of rivers and ghats! While we do not have to make a Venice out of our urban rivers (on the other hand, why not!), we don't have to make them into drainage and urination canals either. While some portions of Dhaka's riverbanks are being cleared of encroachment and pollution, the operation should be partnered with an equally vigorous action: what are the ‘ sustainable models of urban space, usage i and architecture for the riverbanks? ■
A satellite view of Dhaka clearly pres- ' ents the immensity of the water system ! that rings Dhaka and penetrates it like a ‘ vascular tissue. The satellite view also ; makes it obvious that amidst that watery < landscape Dhaka is surrounded by a ■ region of undefined settlements, some of < which are established, while many others ( are in the throes of a helter-skelter evolu- s tion. They are both a product of planning callousness and development abuse; that is, whatever planning exists for some of those areas is poor both in conception and implementation, and whatever development goes on is short-sighted and simply troubling. I hold the view that a condition of dystopia is also an occasion for imaginative renovation. Such sites of urban disarray provoke a strategy where pockets of intervention can be identified, and a new integrated plan may be proposed that combines the social, eco-
nomic, ecological, transportation and regional within the framework of the existing city.
Dhaka has not seen projects that can be described as projects prone to catalysis, that is, sites because of their critical location and multiple vocations harbor the capacity to induce far-reaching and multi-level impact on the city. The recent initiative with Hatirjheel bears the promise of being such a "catalytical" project. The administration involved is to be
thanked for taking that on as an opportunity to create designed urban spaces, reorganize infrastructure and reconstruct some of the old wetland in the heart of the city.
For the full version of this article please read this month's Forum, available free with The Daily Star on November 2.
Kazi Khaleed Ashraf is an architect urbanist and author, and teaches at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu.
Masudul Islam produced the images for the article He is an architect with Salauddm Ahmed at Atelier Robin in Dhaka