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Dhaka heading for disaster

Researchers deplore unplanned urbanisation

Staff Correspondent
A disaster seems inevitable in the capital unless the government stops unplanned activities all around in the name of development, said leading urban planners and researchers at a conference in the city yesterday.
"It will be impossible to save Dhaka from an imminent disaster if the government goes on making decisions on mere political consideration, as it did by arbitrarily splitting the city corporation," said Prof Sarwar Jahan of the urban planning department of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet).
Nearly 20 ministries and 40 departments are involved in development and civic services in the city, but no coordination exists in their work.
Therefore, planned urbanisation and livable condition are becoming impossible to attain without a powerful city governance system, Sarwar said at the conference organised by Bangladesh Institute of Planners (BIP) and the Centre for Development Communication (CDC) at The Daily Star Centre on "Dhaka for the future generation: Our action" with the assistance of the German Embassy in Bangladesh.
BIP President Golam Rahman said nearly 80 percent of the structural plan (first part of the master plan) formulated in 1997 for a planned Dhaka city remained unimplemented.
The final part of the master plan, called Detailed Area Plan (DAP), was made 13 years later. The government has taken a position to compromise on it too, he said.
Dhaka now faces an existential crisis due to the unplanned development, said BIP General Secretary Md Akter Mahmud. Some actions taken by the government allowing destruction of conservable flood flow zones, wetlands and rivers are set to foil the very purpose of the master plan, Golam said.
While researchers for the past several decades have been recommending healthy urbanisation, economic development and environment conservation, unplanned activities have continued in the name of development, said noted urban researcher Prof Nazrul Islam.
Prof Shamsul Alam, a member of the Planning Commission, said planned urbanisation was the driving force for national development, since 60 percent of our gross domestic prod-
uct came from the urban economy while the rest from the rural economy.
CDC Executive Director Muhammad Jahangir, who moderated the discussion, said teams of experts for the next two months would seek recommendations from all concerned on city governance, urbanisation, population and housing, transportation, utility services, public spaces, disaster management, urban economy and conservation of heritage.
The recommendations will be submitted to the government, he said, which would be followed by a civic movement to press home their implementation.
The biggest challenge is how to involve government decision-makers in implementing the recommendations, said Mahfuz Anam, editor and publisher of The Daily Star, adding that the government, instead of addressing serious public interest issues like rampant food adulteration and deaths in road crashes, was more interested in enacting new laws to gag the mass media.
Architect Mubasshar Hussain and Sujit Chowdhury, climate change expert of the German Embassy, also spoke.